Since its inception in 2016, Big Hill Haven women’s shelter has seen a steady increase of clients and an expansion of its supports and services. According to the 2019-2020 Annual Report, the shelter has been able to expand its vital supports to those fleeing domestic violence. Tara McFadden Fund Development Officer, says, “We have been able to expand our hours, we now have two outreach workers that can help clients and able to provide 55 hours a week of support to clients.”

The pandemic led to the increase of the epidemic of family violence. According to Big Hill Haven’s Annual Report, “From January to June 4 of 2020, Cochrane and Area Victim Services reported that they had opened 472 new files, of which 190 were domestic violence-related.”

Big Hill Haven's services are extremely important and vital to the community and the need for its services, unfortunately, continue to grow. McFadden says, “We are seeing an increase, but more concerning from our team’s perspective, is that the degree of violence is also much more severe and the complexity of the cases that they are having to deal with has increased.”

Big Hill Haven's motto is, “A Safe Tomorrow Starts Today” and it provides help to those fleeing domestic violence through outreach support, emergency housing, and case management. Recently, Big Hill Haven successfully hosted a series of online workshops entitled, “Supporting the Supporters”. The workshops provided free domestic violence training resources to residents who wish to learn more on how to help. The more people who are aware, enlightened, and trained to handle the issue of domestic abuse the stronger the network within the community becomes.

Patti Fisher, Co-Founder and Program Manager for Big Hill Haven says, “We are grateful for the interest shown by the participants and anticipate that this will be the start of a solution-focused approach to ending family violence in our community.”

Statistics show that 70-80 per cent of family violence victims do not go to formal supports but disclose their experience to a friend, family member, or casual acquaintance. While those people want to help, they are often ill-equipped to respond proactively to the situation.  The Supporting the Supporters project provided people who wished to learn, the skills and comfort level in which to provide support to those living with family domestic violence. As McFadden puts it, “What the Supporting the Supporters was really about was empowering the community to be able to support people.”

Of course, Big Hill Haven would not be the success story that it is without the support of the community, donor sponsors, volunteers, and key grants. The Annual Report says that $176,000 was raised in 2019/2020. It takes many hours of combined effort and resources to help and last year 62 clients were helped and 82 nights of shelter were provided by Big Hill Haven. The vision continues as they hope to provide more hours of service to those escaping family violence.

The pandemic contributed to the increase of domestic violence and directly impacted the organization’s ability to fundraise. However, with the pandemic hopefully in the rearview mirror, two major fund-raising initiatives are on the horizon for Big Hill Haven.

McFadden says, “This year at Big Hill Haven, we are super excited we’ve been chosen as the major beneficiary of the 2021 Monumental Tournament of Aces.” Which is the Rotary Club of Cochrane's golf tournament that will be held on October 2 and the funds raised will be a huge boost to Big Hill Haven. McFadden says that anyone interested in attending or being a sponsor for the tournament can find full details through the Rotary Club of Cochrane by clicking HERE.

The other major fundraiser for Big Hill Haven will be the return of Cruz4Her to be held on August 28, 2021. Last year they teamed up with Cruise Cochrane and raised $7000 and hoping to reach $10,000 this year. For more details on the event click HERE.

The tale of Big Hill Haven is two-fold it is encouraging that the emergency shelter has been able to expand to meet the need of their clients, however, it is the goal of all those involved to end family violence completely. It is safe to say that the day would be celebrated when Big Hill Haven women’s shelter would no longer be needed.

Until that day arrives, all details about Big Hill Haven can be found by clicking HERE.

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