The Men's Centre in Nanaimo is preparing a counselling guide to help eliminate violence in relationships, thanks to nearly $85,000 in provincial funding.
The guide will be used by counsellors who work with clients to reduce and eliminate domestic and workplace violence.
Funding for the 39-week project, to be completed and released by early July, will give three people work experience in communications, video production, research and report writing.
The workers will consult Crown prosecutors, the RCMP and two psychologists for input into the guide, 100 copies of which will be distributed to at least 50 counselling organizations throughout the province.
Theo Boere, Men's Centre executive director, said the project is already underway and proving challenging for the workers compiling information for the guide and for staff who will have to organize it.
"It's a challenging program as we're getting into it," Boere said. "We're dealing with a pretty controversial, emotionally charged topic … but we've got people in the process of researching and getting them up to speed on the issues involved with domestic violence and starting to write material."
Boere said the Men's Centre has been operating in Nanaimo since 2002, but there is still very little in the way of men's resources in B.C. or even across Canada. The guide will be one more tool in the Men's Centre's effort to shifting society's overall approach to domestic and workplace violence from reacting to incidents after they occur to preventing violent incidents from happening in the first place.
"It's very exciting and cutting-edge," Boere said. "What we've been doing in Nanaimo for 13 years is pretty unique."
This project is funded through the provincial Community and Employer Partnerships program introduced in April 2012 as part of the Employment Program of B.C.