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Date: 9/20/2023
PALMER — The Palmer Domestic Violence Task Force will be hosting its second Build-a-Scarecrow event next Saturday, the coordinator recently announced on Facebook. The event will take place in the Palmer Public Library’s Community Room from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sept. 23 and will be free to the public.
The Build-a-Scarecrow event serves as the first part of the organization’s annual Scarecrow Contest, which began last year as a fun and festive way to bring greater awareness to domestic violence.
“We’re able to share some of the stories and statistics — good stories and bad — to educate people of how prevalent it [domestic violence] is and that there are resources,” Palmer Domestic Violence Task Force Coordinator Crystal explained in an interview when asked why this event was important to the organization.
Crystal, who has worked with the task force for seven years and for safety reasons requested her last name be kept private, emphasized how events like the Scarecrow Contest not only create public awareness for domestic violence, but also gives people a chance to ask questions. Following the Build-a-Scarecrow event, photos of scarecrows can be emailed to the task force until Nov. 1 at noon. The photos will then be posted on Facebook for voting until Nov. 19, when winners will be chosen based on each photos’ number of likes, Crystal said. Scarecrows made outside of the Build-a-Scarecrow event are also eligible to be part of the contest.
The Palmer Domestic Violence Task Force is a nonprofit funded by a grant through the town of Palmer and the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. The organization is in part made up of local volunteers, many who are either domestic violence survivors or professionally work in the field. The organization offers a variety of support, including helping parents provide gifts for children during holidays, raising money for survivors to purchase needed clothing or food, and connecting survivors to outside resources like police or spiritual support. While funding legalities restrict the task force from financially providing for citizens outside of Palmer, Crystal explained that the task force suggests resources to anyone who contacts them in need. In Massachusetts, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence recorded that 33.9% of women and 31.7% of men endure domestic violence during their lives. While these percentages are some of the lowest in the country, they represent over 2.4 million survivors, according to data from the United States Census.
“Domestic violence is not always physical and, honestly, sometimes I think emotional abuse can be worse because it’s not as easy to recognize as a split lip or a black eye,” Crystal said, “But it is absolutely damaging to the person that is suffering from it and it’s damaging to the children that are witnessing it.”
While events like the Scarecrow Contest won’t stop domestic violence, Crystal stated that offering support and public awareness of the issue still makes a difference for survivors. Ultimately, that is the purpose of the organization: to empower and support survivors through public education.
“The way one parent explained [the task force] to her daughter, who was approximately 4 or 5; she [the parent] introduced me and she [the daughter] said ‘Well, who is she, Mommy?’ And she [the parent] said ‘She’s one of the good people,’” Crystal said, when asked about the task force’s impact on Palmer, “‘When someone is being hurt, she helps them.’”
For Crystal, it’s comments like this that confirms how vital the Palmer Domestic Violence Task Force and its events are to their local community. If you or a loved one is suffering from domestic violence, the Palmer Domestic Violence Task Force can be contacted by phone at 413-324 8585, by email at PalmerDVTF@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger. The task force is available to answer any questions and connections are private. Those in contact do not need to share any personal identifying information to speak with a task force member.