The Ontario Rural Woman Abuse Study (ORWAS), final report

APPENDIX E

COMMUNITY ABUSE PROGRAM OF RURAL ONTARIO  (CAPRO)

The Community Abuse Program for Rural Ontario (CAPRO) started as a not-for-profit project dedicated to addressing rural violence and abuse problems with collaborative, community-based solutions.  This was deemed necessary because most of the current policies and programs are often designed using urban models. Donna Lunn, a past-president of the Ontario Farm Women's Network, created CAPRO after initiating a pilot project in East Elgin in 1994.  The pilot project promoted community awareness around the issues of rural domestic abuse in order to encourage collaborative community action. This was followed by a “Building Support for Community Action” provincial conference which laid some important foundations for building and strengthening provincial, cross-sectoral relationships that were to become an important component of CAPRO.

CAPRO believes in “Rural Solutions to Rural Concerns”  and has been promoting community development and striving for healthier rural communities since 1994.  Encouraging rural communities to define abuse within their own context, and identify their barriers as well as their assets and capacities also encourages these communities to take ownership and responsibility of the issue, and design their own solution.

Abuse is abuse, however, the factors which are unique to 'rural' living influence its identification and delivery of support services.    Besides the obvious obstacle of a large geographic area with a sparse population which hinders the location of support services, there are many other rural influences.   Some of these include, a lack of public transportation, lower household incomes, lack of family care programs, underservicing of medical services, and isolation. The reliance on family for support, and the tight knit community where, perhaps, kinship is strong can at times be either a challenge or an asset.   

In an area where health and social services are non-existent or declining and families do not have 'benefit' packages, strong communities are an asset.  The high rate of volunteerism and the keen sense of community and caring are valuable.   Engaging  rural citizens in defining their challenges and assets and  having input to create their own programs increases the suitability, the acceptance and the sustainability of them.

CAPRO's objectives are to:

  1. increase the awareness of abuse and violence to rural residents themselves; and increase the awareness of services available
  2. increase the sensitivities of rural uniqueness to the service providers to rural communities;
  3. and to encourage a collaborative community model to prevent further abuse.

Certainly what separates CAPRO from other organizations is the level of participatory research and the belief in the empowerment of our rural communities.

CAPRO has invested in the capacity building of individuals and communities. The program is based on a train-the-trainer process,  thereby, leaving transferrable skills in the community.    CAPRO has  borrowed a concept taken from the Inuktituk language, "Isoomituk"-  'the person who can create the environment to allow wisdom to reveal itself". By inviting all stakeholders to participate, the community holds the knowledge of their needs, challenges, assets and pathways to solutions. CAPRO has played the role of Isoomituk - for we have provided the forum for various service providers, local and provincial, to meet together with community people and other informal service providers for a realistic, holistic awareness of abuse in the rural community.

Five years of local action and research on a province-wide basis has resulted in an increased knowledge of abuse in the rural context. CAPRO has also successfully increased the awareness of abuse within many farm and rural households and organizations, and created partnerships among local, provincial, and federal levels.

Key events in 1998 were designed to draw together the community-based analysis and action  and to critically analyze CAPRO’s research and experience, resulting in identification of best management practices for successful community action, as well as identification and extraction of recommendations for policy and program development. Two publications resulted.

CAPRO has accomplished a great deal in the past five years:

ADVISORY BOARD, 1999

CAPRO’s  PARTNERSHIPS

(federal, provincial and local)