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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Two students from Yellowknife's Aurora College have compiled information breaking down what services are available to those suffering from intimate partner violence in the NWT.

The contact information of such services as police, legal, crisis intervention, women's shelters and second-stage housing, and other informal or volunteer supports, are listed for every community where they are available in the NWT.

Nursing student Marshirette Mauricio and social work student Anne Mackenzie are working with their academic lead for the five-year project, Dr. Pertice Moffitt, manager of health and research programs with Aurora Research Institute.

At the opening of the 12th annual Family Violence Awareness Week on Friday, the two research students explained their project and its goals to a full house at the Salvation Army Church.

"For the first year, we were able to finish an environmental scan and look at the different programs and services within the Northwest Territories ... We hope to come up with policy recommendations to implement plans to reduce and minimize family violence in the NWT," said Mauricio.

"What I learned from this research is that family violence is not a domestic problem. It is a community problem. That's why it's important for us to respond to it."

The project, titled the Rural and Northern Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence, has a GIS mapping aspect where the incidents of intimate partner violence - data from the RCMP in the four jurisdictions of northern Alberta, Manitoba Saskatchewan and the NWT - are documented.

The next phase of the project is for the students to conduct interviews with RCMP members, shelter workers and community members across the North.

"They're digging into the academic literature of intimate partner violence. There's not a whole lot of literature about the North and that's what's also very significant," said Moffitt.

"We're looking at what is community response to intimate partner violence and what resources are there and what people think would help, what kind of strategies we need to do."

The project is funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada from 2011 to 2016.

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