Local leaders highlight increased success from Golden House’s ‘Be Safe’ campaign in Brown County
GREEN BAY, Wis. (WFRV) – 920-212-SAFE. When you call that number, a trained advocate at Golden House will answer and provide resources to anyone who is a victim of domestic abuse, which is the mission of Golden House’s ‘Be Safe’ campaign.
“Our mission is to provide saved his part to victims of domestic abuse while leading community efforts against violence, and that’s exactly what we’re here to do,” said Golden House Executive Director Cheeia Lo.
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As the main domestic agency in Brown County, the community has rallied around the campaign, and Cheeia Lo said she could not express how rewarding it has been to see its growth.
“I’m proud to say that we launched the ‘Be Safe’ campaign roughly about 18 months ago, and since the launch of the campaign, we have seen an increase of 26% of individuals calling in,” said Lo. “Sometimes it’s not the victim themself. It could be a concerned family member; it could be a concerned employer calling to see what kind of services we are able to provide for a staff member.”
Golden House started the conversation about the ‘Be Safe’ campaign two years ago, so Lo said that seeing this campaign come to life and having gained over 30 partnerships in that time was unbelievable.
“In 2023, we provided services to over 2,700 people in our community, and this is just Brown Couunty’s number, but we also took over 12,000 hotline calls, so we are anticipating more than 13,000 calls this year,” explained Lo. “It’s our community coming together and not just Golden House bringing that awareness to let everyone know that there is safe, free, confidential help out there.”
She said it’s simple things like law enforcement putting bumper stickers on their patrol cars with the number on them or hospitals like Bellin Health and Prevea placing the number on the back of their doors.
“We are thankful for our community partners that we work with, nonprofit partners, hospitals, the fire department, and the schools,” said Lo. “It just gives another outlet for individuals to reach out to us and lets them know that Golden House is here 24 hours, 7 days a week to provide that service, and we try to make it as easy as possible for people to reach out.”
As for shelter, with their new building located at 1120 University Ave in Green Bay, they offer additional housing for families who need a safe home. The facility has already reached 95% capacity.
“They were able to raise over 8 million dollars in order to create that incredible space that’s available now for more families to be able to come. for us to be part of a campaign that helps make our community better,” said O’Connor Connective’s Founder and CEO, Bridget O’Connor.
“That shelter is only about a quarter of the work, and people don’t know what the other percentage of the work that we do is,” said Lo. “We’re out there in the community providing prevention education, we do safety planning with individuals, we help individuals with restraining orders, we have an advocate at the district office, we have a support group, and we also have our safe home programs.”
O’Connor Connective is one of Golden House’s many partners but has assisted the organization as a whole in prospering throughout this new campaign.
“O’Connor Connective is a partner with many nonprofit organizations, but we are really blessed to have the opportunity to work with the leaders and volunteers who were passionate about advancing Golden House and helping Golden House expand its shelter. We also had the opportunity to grow the outreach so that more people knew that there was local and free support for those dealing with domestic violence.”
O’Connor told Local 5’s Samantha Petters that the community’s investment in embracing the idea of eliminating domestic violence in this region has been phenomenal.
“This campaign has just really created an incredible ripple effect, and for us to be part of a campaign that helps make our community better? That’s really the storytelling that we love to do,” said O’Connor. “
O’Connor also said the campaign just took off once they had things like videos, a website, posters, and other content that their partners could access.
“We really pushed this campaign creatively, making sure that we had all of the videos and the materials available in multiple languages. We wanted to make sure that the creative really reflected all people in our community and that they could see themselves in the illustrations and hear themselves in the voices of those who were really behind those audio clips,” she explained. “The fact that WFRV and others really helped us get that information out, that’s made all the difference.”
This information is not available just for companies and organizations to share but for individuals, viewers, and people who just want to support because, like O’Connor and Lo both said, you never know who might need help.
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“We’ve been around for over 45+ years, and we are thankful for every single relationship that we have with our community because it truly takes our community to end violence, and we continue to see that with our campaign.”
For additional information for yourself or someone you know, you can visit the campaign’s official website or reach out to Golden House or O’Connor Connective representatives for assistance.
