EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE 

IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE...

Lynn Moriarty

No woman expects her marriage to end with a Holiday Season spent with her children in a battered woman’s shelter.

Yet for many Coachella Valley women and children that is exactly where some will be.  In fact, the demand for our emergency shelter and other Shelter From The Storm services is up nearly one third over last year.

Couple this with increasingly tough economic times and you are looking at a potential disaster in the making.  As if abused women don’t have enough to deal with when living in a violent home the increased financial stressors brought on by a weak economy are adding to their burden.  The physical violence alone, becomes more than they can bear,  causing many more abused women and their children to turn to us as the Valley’s only resource dedicated to meeting their needs for safety.  

We have sustained draconian budget cuts from all of our governmental and many of our private funding sources, donations have been stagnant over the last quarter and foundation funding is unable to fill the gap.  This has resulted in our being forced to eliminate four positions and to cut a fifth in half.  All of our administrative staff have taken voluntary salary cuts even though our admin costs are at a remarkably low 12 percent.  In short, for Shelter From the Storm, this means having to do more with less.  If we are forced to make further staffing reductions it will be impossible to sustain our services at their current levels.

No abused woman and her children should ever be on a waiting list for entry to an emergency shelter.  One of our goals is to make sure that we provide emergency services to all families in danger at the express time of their need.  To date, we have been able to meet our goals, but, given the woeful state of funding, we need your help to continue to make our life-saving services available on a moment’s notice and to provide for those families once they are sheltered.

The desert is well known for its philanthropic generosity and its history of giving back.  Supporting charitable organizations is an integral part of our desert culture.  Yet even with this history it is often easy to forget that even in difficult times the non-profit sector still depends on the generosity of each individual to do his or her part to help those less fortunate.   

In my 27 years in the non-profit sector, I have never seen anything like today’s economic challenges.  Today we find ourselves struggling to keep our programs alive and need your help more than ever before.

During this season of celebration and giving, please take a moment to think about mothers and their children living not in their own homes filled with precious memories, but in a battered woman’s shelter bravely trying to rebuild their lives.  They need us.  And we need you.

Lynn Moriarty, Executive Director

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