Women’s Aid accepts high school donation

SHETLAND Women’s Aid enjoyed an unexpected windfall when they received a £3,000 donation from the Youth and Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) earlier this week.

 Secondary three pupils from Lerwick’s Anderson High School chose the Women’s Aid branch as their preferred local charity after working on a series of projects on social issues and active citizenship.

The YPI was originally the idea of Julie Toskan-Casale, who is the founder of MAC Cosmetics, as an innovative way to financially support local, grassroots charities.

Accepting the donation, Astryd Jamieson of Shetland Women’s Aid said: “We are thrilled to have been awarded the money from the YPI, the girls did an amazing job on their presentation and we are very grateful to have been their charity of choice.

“We plan to use it to help maintain our existing work with clients and establish our young persons services further to include group work.”

Meanwhile, the latest figures on domestic abuse show that the charity, which campaigns for effective responses to domestic abuse, deals with at least 17,000 new cases – and possibly many more – in Scotland each year.

Refuge was not available for 46 per cent of those who sought it due to a lack of safe and suitable accommodation, the charity said.

Chief executive of Scottish Women’s Aid Marsha Scott said: “As Scotland heads into a further period of economic instability with cuts to social security and local services, the presence of a stable, robust, and properly funded Women’s Aid service is what stands between so many women and children experiencing domestic abuse and homelessness, destitution and powerlessness.

“The expertise and dedication of Women’s Aid workers changes lives, and Scotland would be significantly poorer without them.”