The bathtub project

Hayley Fisher and Elizabeth McCormack of the Dal Women's Centre, organizers of  the Bathtub Project (Pearce photo)

What's a child's pool doing in the SUB? This is a question students and others may be asking themselves this week, as groups across campus unite for a very good cause. During the week of November 20th, the kiddie pool will serve as a makeshift "bathtub" set up to collect donations of new and gently-used toiletries and monetary donations to help victims of family violence.

When millions of people are being slaughtered in Darfur and still millions more are dying of AIDS and poverty in Africa, it can sometimes be hard to remember that terrible injustices are happening in our very own country as well. Indeed, some of them are occurring on our very street. According to StatsCan, in 2002 alone 55,901 women and 45,347 children were admitted to one of Canada's 524 shelters to escape domestic violence.

This year, various student groups on campus are coming together to try and help the women and children in some of these shelters. The bathtub project is an inter-faith, inter-society initiative involving the Dalhousie Women's Centre, the Jewish Student's Association, the King's Jewish Student's Society, the International Development and Educational Awareness Society (IDEAS), the Dalhousie Association of Psychology Students (DAPS) and V-day Dalhousie.

Each one of these societies will be responsible for collecting donations. During this same week, this initiative will also be carried out by MacMaster University in Hamilton, and the University of Western Ontario in London. All donations from the Dalhousie project will be given to Adsum House or Bryony House during a special memorial service on December 6, remembering the victims of the Montreal Massacre.

November 25 is the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Although the toiletries and monetary donations gathered through this project are not likely to solve the problem of domestic abuse, they will help the shelters gain much-needed items. They will also make the holiday season a little brighter for these victims, while reminding the community that injustice occurs in our backyards as well as on the other side of the globe.

For more information about the Bathtub Project e-mail hfisher@dal.ca

Hayley Fisher is a psychology student at Dalhousie.