On Monday 25^th November the Youth Team from Exchange House attended the One in Five annual Christmas Event in Ballyfermot.

This is a community event which demonstrates support and solidarity to women experiencing domestic violence. The event is all about raising awareness to everyone in the community. A number of organisations attended the event alongside local schools who sung, read out messages of support and each had the opportunity to place a decoration on the Christmas tree.

The event was very personalised with a survivor of domestic violence who read out a very detailed 20 year story of how she suffered from domestic violence. Senator Ivan Bacik who attended the event spoke about how one in five women experience domestic violence in Ireland. This statistic was portrayed with masks been given out both in black and white with every 5^th person having a black mask given the audience a clear image of just how many people in one community could be affected by domestic violence. Local guards, community groups and school liaison officers were also in attendance.

This event complimented the work that Exchange House does through Sunia Geel. Sunia Geel is an EU programme which Exchange House was chosen to be lead partner on. This programme is aimed at targeting woman and children who are experiencing domestic violence and offers them help and support. As part of our continuous work in Sunia Geel Exchange House partakes in all relevant domestic violence events to ensure that our project is informed and up to date with our contemparies.

The event proved very successful and the message was portrayed in a very clear way.