Media release from Wellington Women's Refuge

Cuba St Loves Womens Refuge Local Appeal

Cuba Street Love Women’s Refuge – Do you?

Top Cuba Street Venues Support Women’s Refuge Annual Appeal

Wellington Women’s Refuge and Te Whare Rokiroki Maori Women’s Refuge today announced that as part of their annual appeal, top local venues Matterhorn, Good Luck and San Francisco Bath House will be running a night of back-to-back gigs on Friday 20th July to raise much needed money for their local refuges.

Annual Appeal Coordinator Kyla Lyons said “Women’s Refuge prides itself on providing a local service for women and children in our community who experience family violence. Annual appeal is the one time of year local Refuges have a really public face and we are so excited to have such great local venues and artists supporting us. This kind of support from our community gives our organisation a real morale boost and is one of the really special things about the Wellington City’

The lineup is an impressive range of well known names with the evening beginning at SanFran Bathhouse where from 6-11pm people can see Newtown Rocksteady, Paper Scissors and Redbird Jnr. From 10pm-3am Matterhorn will be hosting ‘One for the Ladies’ with local legend Bella Kalolo, Lisa Tomlins, Open Souls’ Tyra Hammond, Vanessa Stacey and DJ Ayehsa as the featured lineup. For those that want to a hear a quality local DJ, Goodluck Bar has also got behind the fundraiser and people can see DJ Kev Fresh and friends from 10 till late. Both SanFran and Matterhorn will be donating the entire entry charge of $10 a head to the local Refuges, with Goodluck doing the same with it’s gold coin entry.

The local Refuges have been operating in Wellington for more than 30 years. Between them they work with over 700 women and children in the community a year, with an additional nearly 200 in their two safehouses. The Wellington refuges receive approximately half of their funding from the government and raise the rest through events like annual appeal, donations and smaller grants, but as Annual Appeal Coordinator Kyla Lyons points out, events such as Cuba for Refuge do much more than raise money, it is a great opportunity to raise awareness of family violence in our community.

‘So much of family violence and of Refuge’s work is out of public view, whenever we have events such as this, it not only raises vital money for our services, it reminds all those women in our community who are living with violence that there are services such as Refuge who can offer support, and that there are people out there who care.’

With family violence making up nearly 60%[1] of all crime in New Zealand and Refuges around the country dealing with consistently high caseloads in tough economic times, family violence remains a pressing issue for communities everywhere. Wellington Women’s Refuge commends the lead local venues such as SanFran Bathhouse, Matterhorn and Goodluck, who have helped to provide a fun and creative way for people wanting to support their local Refuges.

‘Family violence is such a hard topic for many people to talk about, what Cuba for Refuge is doing is creating a platform for Wellingtonians to support the work being done for women and children experiencing violence in a way that is really positive and makes the most of the wonderful venues and artists in our community’.

For more information about gigs or how you can support the Refuge annual appeal contact:

Cuba for Refuge will be happening:
San Francisco Bathouse 6pm-11pm with a $10 entry
Matterhorn 10pm-3am with a $10 entry
Good Luck 10pm-late with a gold coin entry
All proceeds going to Wellington Women’s Refuge and Te Whare Rokiroki Maori women’s refuge.

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[1] NZ Police Statistics 2011

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