New Project Saturates Pine Castle with Domestic Violence Information
Thursday, October 14, 2010
By: Euna Lhee, Healthy State Collaborative

October 14, 2010 | WMFE - This week, 90.7 and the Healthy State Collaborative are focusing on the issue of domestic violence. Six months ago, Orange County's domestic violence shelter Harbor House launched Project Courage, a first-of-its-kind domestic violence awareness program. It targets Pine Castle, a working class neighborhood in south Orlando.

There are a lot of challenges facing door-to-door volunteers these days. Aggressive dogs. Unfriendly residents. Nobody home. Speeding cars. And the occasional ceramic statue. 

But none of this fazes Monica Mendez, who goes door to door in Pine Castle once a week. She usually introduces herself like this : “Hi, How are you? I’m Dr. Monica Mendez with Harbor House of Central Florida.”

Armed with informational bookmarks, she and two other volunteers tell a local resident about Project Courage. 

"You’re going to be seeing Pine Castle bombarded with information about it. We’re going to have events and trainings,” Mendez said.

The goal of Project Courage is to saturate one neighborhood with information about domestic violence. The project chose Orlando’s Pine Castle because of its strong community identity and diversity in ethnicity, religion and age.

A group of local donors called 100 Women Strong is funding the effort. Project Coordinator Mendez says it’s the first time a domestic violence program has tried to reach so many types of people in so many different ways in one neighborhood.

"We’re already working with the schools if you have any kids and with sheriff’s department, childcare, whatever. We’re everywhere, including the Y… and faith organizations,” Mendez said. “We’re just trying to make the community safer. Have a good day.”

One collaboration is with a local arts group called MicheLee Puppets. The group worked with Harbor House to develop a half-hour show to teach elementary school kids how to deal with abuse, if it’s happening inside their homes. Puppeteers perform the shows in schools around Orlando, including in Pine Castle.

Project Courage also trains people who work with families and youth, like Marisil Burgos, who helps run an Orlando day care center.

In September, Burgos attended a Project Courage training at Iglesia El Calvario, a church on the outskirts of Pine Castle. She decided to go, since she thought it would be relevant to her work. She sees 70+ kids a day, and a year ago, she noticed an angry two-year-old boy having at least six tantrums every day.

“That behavior was so unacceptable in my job… because we are not understanding what’s going on with him, but we need to help him,” Burgos said.

When Burgos talked to the boy’s mother about her son’s behavior, the mother eventually admitted she was being abused in her home. She told Burgos how that was affecting her toddler son.

"[The mother told me :]OK, he’s like this because he has been seeing stuff that one- or two-year-old kid is not supposed to be watching or seeing,” Burgos said.

At the Project Courage training, Burgos learned how to help the toddler’s mother by offering her support and giving her the necessary information to seek help. The mother ended up fleeing to Georgia to escape the abuse and death threats from her partner. She didn’t respond to our attempts to contact her, but Burgos says her friend is much happier now with her new life, despite not being able to completely erase her past.

"She has bad memories, horrible memories,” Burgos said.

Burgos still keeps in touch with the mother. She says she’s also helped a few other domestic violence survivors through her work at the daycare center.

University of Central Florida sociologist Jana Jasinski says following up on trainees like Burgos is a key part in the evaluation of the two-year project.

"Any place where a community member is now being referred to a source that can help them would demonstrate to us that the program is making a difference,” Jasinski said.

She hopes to measure effectiveness by tracking the number of domestic violence calls in the community and also conducting surveys and focus groups­­.

"Ultimate success would be eradication of domestic violence in the community,” Jasinski said. "But I think initially… getting the community together to focus on one issue and then want to figure out how to solve it, that will represent success.”

Jasinski says the challenge is to gather all the data, since the project is composed of many parts. She’s not sure how successful the project will be, but she’s sure of one thing.

"I really think we’re going to learn a lot from this about what’s going to work, what works best, and how communities can get engaged in preventing domestic violence,” Jasinski said.

The next step, she says, would be to take the parts that work to another community.