Tararua District’s White Ribbon highlights issue of family violence

Dayna Mercer and Trudie Flynn from the Tararua White Ribbon Action Group last year. The white ribbons and stories help highlight the issue of family violence.

By Leanne Warr

Opening up conversations around family violence is part of the credo of White Ribbon Day.

It’s been 20 years since what is now an internationally recognised day began in New Zealand and Tararua District is marking that anniversary with barbecues in Pahīatua and Dannevirke.

Tararua White Ribbon Action Group chairwoman Dayna Mercer said the group would also be out early on the morning of November 25, tying ribbons around trees and putting up stories of victims of family violence.

White Ribbon was initially started in Canada by a men’s group in 1991 and later adopted by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The movement came to New Zealand in 2004.

“It migrated over here when there was a need for it,” Mercer said.

While she didn’t have the numbers, the statistics for family violence in the Tararua District are “not great”.

She said it could be because of lower socio-economic areas and ”because we are so rural and our support services and agencies that we can call upon are more limited”.

While small communities have created great services and supports where needed, Mercer said many extra things, especially for men, weren’t available because there weren’t the resources for it.

She said the district could lose more services because of funding cuts.

“It’s a massive concern for our community to think ‘where are these supports coming from and what is this going to look like in the next seven to 12 months for our community?’”

Mercer said recent changes in law were a positive step, such as around the ability to file for divorce while filing for a protection order when leaving an abusive relationship.

She said it was “hugely empowering” for victims of family violence, who otherwise faced a two-year wait after the struggle of gaining the emotional strength to leave a relationship.

The Tararua group is focusing on getting more men to be White Ribbon ambassadors.

Mercer said ambassadors understand White Ribbon and will be able to advise others in the community on support services and what they can do about their home situation.

“The more ambassadors we have in our community, the more people will see that actually a lot of people are aware of this and a lot of people are standing up against it and feel more normalised in talking about it.”

As well as the barbecues, on Wednesday, the local schools will take part in a rock hunt.

Mercer said she was hoping to get as good a turnout this year as last year.

She said the school activity might get the children talking about it and then going home and starting to ask questions.

“If the parents don’t know, they might actually look into, ‘okay, what are these kids talking about’ and opening that communication in the home about White Ribbon and what it means.”