Event to highlight domestic violence

Safer Families Rotorua is organising an event to help raise awareness about domestic violence.

With White Ribbon Month well under way, Safer Families Rotorua is organising an event to help raise awareness about domestic violence.

November marks White Ribbon Month, which culminates in White Ribbon Day on November 25, an international day where people wear a white ribbon to show that they do not condone violence towards women.

According to the Women's Refuge one in three women experience psychological or physical abuse from their partners in their lifetime, with the organisation helping about 20,000 women and children in need last year alone.

Safer Families Rotorua's Kiti Ransfield-King is part of the team organising the local White Ribbon campaign this year and its main event, White Ribbon Celebrate Whanau Day, which be held on Saturday November 29 at Rotorua's Village Green.

She said the event was about raising awareness of domestic violence, which she described as a huge issue in Rotorua and across the country. "It's an issue that affects all of us," she said.

"We're all bound to have family, friends or know someone affected by it and it has a ripple effect in the community."

Ms Ransfield-King said the White Ribbon Celebrate Whanau Day was a community-driven day designed to engage people and spread messages about respecting women and children and that "a person's past doesn't have to be their future".

"The day is a celebration of what we can be as whanau," she said. She said she believed a community approach towards domestic violence was needed in order to make a difference.

The event will feature a 4km bicycle ride around Rotorua that people can get involved in, as well as food and entertainment.

White Ribbon Motorcycle Riders will also ride into the event. "At the end of the day, we want people to have a fun, engaging time, as a family, as a whanau, and come away thinking about the messages they have learned."