Véronica Saldi, coordinator of the educational team at the La Louvière battered women’s shelter, runs a workshop with seven residents. A staff member at the center for the past 10 years, she highlights the rapid change in the profile of victims received at the shelter in the past few years: “The symptoms are often the same: lack of self-esteem and a very strong feeling of guilt. However, there are far more injuries now, more than just the experience of a battered adult woman. We will need to open up and expand our work, so that we can identify abuse, abandonment, lack of affection and depreciation in their early stages. The issues that women struggle with today are complex and many-fold.”
In addition to these workshops and to the general multi-functionality of all the staff at the center, Véronica Saldi works with the resident children, does awareness-raising in schools, and gives verbal and physical self-defense classes for women.
January 21, 2011 – La Louvière – Belgium.
© Pierre-Yves GINET