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The intersectionality of poverty with other issues in society is hardly ever discussed, said local violence prevention advocate. Various university and community groups presented an interactive workshop that discussed the connection between poverty and domestic violence.

“This workshop is important because domestic violence and poverty are both very hidden issues and a lot of times, you don’t realize even if your close friends are experiencing something like that,” said Center for Civic Engagement marketing and communications coordinator, Erin McIlraith. “This will help us be able to be better supporters to those friends and people that we love that might need our help.”

During the workshop, the In Their Shoes kit provided by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence was utilized. The kit provided examples to direct discussions about how economic control ties into domestic abuse.

This interactive workshop allowed those in attendance to go through the stories of different men and women who have experienced domestic violence. All of the stories that were included came from the experiences of domestic violence survivors from Washington.

Vanessa Corwin, WSU Campus Advocate for Alternatives to Violence of the Palouse, believes because of the complexity and difficulty of this issue, it’s eye-opening to have these workshops that talk about these topics.

“We’ve gotten a lot of responses that explain (attendees) previously thought domestic violence was just the physical aspect,” Corwin said. “We don’t often talk about the psychological abuse or the sexual abuse or the economic abuse that’s going on. It really allows everyone to be able to talk about this issue.”

Conducting a workshop with hands-on experiences is one of the most effective ways to help someone learn something, McIlraith said. Rather than just being lectured at, those who attended this workshop were able to learn in a more interactive way.

“When you’re doing more hands-on work, you’re more likely to retain it and understand it and connect with it on a deeper level,” McIlraith said.

Through the workshop, those in attendance were able to see the complexities of domestic violence and the specific barriers up when leaving an abusive situation, especially when intersecting domestic violence with poverty. The workshop provided those in attendance with a composite understanding of the complexities of domestic violence that numbers and statistics cannot, Corwin said.

“The numbers of domestic violence and intimate partner violence are astonishingly terrible,” she said, “but I think these true stories allow us to really understand the gravity of the situation.” 

The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) worked with YWCA of WSU, WSU’s Women’s Resource Center and Alternatives to Violence of the Palouse to put on this event.