Top End Women's Shelter
“A woman should not have to choose between leaving and having somewhere to sleep that night. Now, in Darwin, she does not.”
Domestic abuse support charity
Darwin, Northern Territory
Top End Women's Shelter answers calls from across the Darwin region and far beyond it. For years the hardest part of the call was the end of it: the shelter's few beds were almost always full, and the nearest alternative could be a flight or a long drive away, which for most women meant leaving work, school and family behind as well as the violence.
The building the shelter had was not built for the job either. It was a converted house with shared rooms, a front door that opened onto the street, and no space for a woman arriving with three children at two in the morning. Families who did get in often left again within days because there was no privacy and nowhere for the children to be children.
A loan from Charity Bank Australia funded secure accommodation: self-contained units with their own doors and kitchens, a controlled entry and monitored perimeter, a shaded play area, a room for case workers and the visiting legal service, and cyclone-rated construction so the shelter stays open through the wet season rather than evacuating the people it protects.
The shelter now houses families for as long as they need rather than as long as a shared room can be stretched. Around sixty families a year move through the units, and far more of them leave into a home of their own instead of back into the situation they fled, because the case workers have the weeks it takes to arrange housing, income and school places. Children stay at the same school through the stay — the single change staff say makes the most difference to how a family recovers.
The shelter chose Charity Bank Australia because it was willing to lend against a building that most lenders saw only as an unusual, high-security, single-purpose site. The lending team understood the charity's mix of government funding and donations, kept the address confidential throughout, and worked at a pace the shelter could manage alongside running a service that never closes.
“A woman should not have to choose between leaving and having somewhere to sleep that night. Now, in Darwin, she does not.”
Helen Marchetti, Chief Executive of Top End Women's Shelter
About Charity Bank Australia
Charity Bank Australia is the loans and savings bank owned by and committed to supporting the social sector. We use our savers’ money to lend to housing, education, social care, community and other social purpose organisations across Australia.
Nothing in this article constitutes an invitation to engage in investment activity nor is it advice or a recommendation and professional advice should be taken before any course of action is pursued.
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