Okay. Thank you.
My name is Joanne McGee. I work with the Mushuau Innu First Nation in Natuashish, Labrador. Natuashish is a community on the north coast of Labrador. It's geographically isolated, accessible only by plane or ship in the summer months.
As for my role, I don't live in the community. I visit and work there on a travelling basis. My role right now is providing some assistance to the health director, who is Kathleen Benuen. She may have joined this call--I heard a couple of beeps on the line--and if so, she'll speak to things as well.
Certainly from my perspective, I do know that violence against women is an issue in Natuashish. Natuashish is a dry community in that there's an alcohol ban in place. It's in its third year now, but it will be four years in January.
The population is about 850 people, with a little over 50% of them under the age of 24, according to my last assessment of the last census data. It has a high birth rate. There are a number of young women who are having a lot of babies, generally.
Even though there is an alcohol ban in the community, there is still evidence of drinking in the community. Sometimes, as a result of that, women experience violence to themselves or their children. The community is serviced by a safe house, a building that is near the RCMP station. It serves two purposes. First, it's a safe place for youth who may be in unsafe situations, perhaps related mainly to substance abuse, for example. It's meant to be a very temporary solution until their family can sort themselves out, or until they come into the care of child, youth, and family services, or until whatever needs to be put in place happens once the immediate crisis has settled down. The other purpose of the safe house is to provide a safe haven for the women and children who may be fleeing domestic violence situations.
The unfortunate problem we have in Natuashish is that the safe house is underfunded. It's funded jointly by Health Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs. However, the funding level we receive is insufficient to meet the needs of the community.
The mandate of the safe house is to provide 24/7 access to people who need it. With budgetary issues and problems, we've had serious challenges. We've been able to meet that mandate in providing 24-hour access, but we haven't been able to do a lot in terms of outreach and violence prevention types of initiatives. It's mainly been operational requirements of the safe house and trying to meet those needs for women and families.
I personally haven't had a lot of contact. We've recently started working, though, with the Women's Policy Office in Newfoundland and Labrador, and also have begun a working relationship with Status of Women Canada. That's been quite recent. We will be doing that work.
A lot of the work we do around violence prevention, once we can get some funds to support those types of initiatives, involves a group in the community known as the Next Generation Guardians. It is mainly a women's group that provides support to women and young girls in the community. It recently has reached out to men as well, but it's mainly for women and young girls. In terms of promoting, protecting, and preserving the Mushuau Innu culture, it certainly is one of their strengths.
I don't know what else I can say.