Rotary Supporting Domestic Abuse Support

Rotarian Sarah Vile, a member of Swanage and Purbeck Rotary, is leading support and awareness for the Freedom programme, an initiative aimed at tackling domestic abuse.

Here at Swanage and Purbeck Rotary, we are very keen to encourage this assistance and following information received from another of our Rotarians, Magda Kawinska, a donation of £1,000 has been made to DAIT 4 Change (Domestic Abuse InTervention), an organisation set up originally in Dorchester by a women’s refuge manager, which provides both a ‘Freedom’ programme and a recovery toolkit helping to empower victims with lifelong skills to avoid them falling back into abusive relationships.

This follows on from the ’16 Days of Activism’ initiative that took place at the end of 2024 and was successful in raising awareness of this issue to a much wider audience.

Support for people who disclose domestic abuse is vitally important, given how difficult it can be for the victim to take that first step, and guidelines are now being established to make it easier for people to be able to manage that situation in a better way.

Unfortunately while DAIT 4 Change was previously funded by a skills and learning community partnership and the Dorset Welfare Committee, it was recently unable to secure any new funding when Dorset Council renewed its domestic abuse grants. But the need is still there so any funding they can achieve will help them to continue to provide their vital service. The charity has set up a GoFundMe page which is available here.