April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Part 5
Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 -- 11:50 AM
-April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.I spoke with Melissa Geldernick, the Sexual Assault Advocate for the Personal Development Center.
Melissa explained some of the initiatives the department does in recognition of the month.
She said, "I do something called the clothes line project. It's a little bit modified from what the original version is. The original is different colored t-shirts and the t-shirts represent something. They represent whether they're a victim of domestic violence, or sexual assault or those types of categories. And then the sizes of the shirt reflect how old they are. And the shirts typically have their story and what happened to these people."
"That's a very powerful tool and it's very loaded. It's loaded with content. So, I do a little modified version because I don't want to be too much. Because I already get the I don't think this is appropriate information for our kids to see. Which, I understand, but then again, I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about what you can do if something happens to you."
"So, my clothes line project, what I do, is I have a jeans and t-shirts, it's kind of a mix. And I have people do it. We have a support group in Marshfield for women of domestic violence and I go out with them and we decorate the jeans and they have words or symbols or sayings that just supports awareness and supports the people that have gone through this stuff. They're pretty basic things, but the overall message, I think, is that awareness piece and it's just simple."
Coming up on Wednesday, we'll hear about more of the initiatives the PDC does in recognition of the month.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.