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Vigil aims to prevent violence in Yorkton

Violence occurs every day in our community, and a vigil hosted at Dr. Brass aims to bring awareness to how violence affects people, whether within the community or the world as a whole.
Dr. Brass School
CANDLES ARE LIT in memory of the victims of violence during the vigil at Dr. Brass School. The event was part of Violence Awareness Week, with the goal of preventing violence within the community.

Violence occurs every day in our community, and a vigil hosted at Dr. Brass aims to bring awareness to how violence affects people, whether within the community or the world as a whole.

Lavern Dumka, director of Shelwin House, says the vigil is held to commemorate the senseless death of 14 female engineering students at a university in Montreal in 1989, but it also exists to remind people that violence is still occurring.

Part of the reason for bringing the vigil into the school is to confront issues facing students, Dumka says. For them, the most relevant issue is going to be bullying, and that was reflected in the theme of the day, with guest speaker Rachel Ashley speaking of her experiences with bullying and how she overcame the abuse she experienced in school. With bullying leading to the suicides of young people nation wide, Dumka be--lie-ves that a positive mes-s-age is something kids need to hear so they can overcome their own struggles.

Beyond responding to the difficulties students have in their daily lives now, Dumka believes that educating youth in the community is the best way to reduce violence in the future.

“I really believe that we can plant the seed that violence is not acceptable and there are alternatives. Everyone gets angry, that's a normal emotion, it's what you do with that anger.”

The annual vigil is a reminder of the violence that is still prevalent in the community, Dumka says. Shelwin House and similar transitional homes continue to be needed as the rate of violence is not decreasing.

“According to Stats Canada, one in four women are abused, so if you walk down any street in Yorkton while we're celebrating Christmas, if you did a count of every fourth house, that's how prevalent it is in our community.”

While this is Violence Awareness Week, Dumka says that at Shelwin House they work every day to prevent violence, and they hope that kids like those in attendance at Dr. Brass will be an integral part of reducing the rates of violence in the future.