Women find guiding light in Shashi Assanand

Shashi Assanand (right), winner of the 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Community Building.

Shashi Assanand (right), winner of the 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Community Building.

Domestic violence is an issue that plagues many women and communities, and Shashi Assanand has founded the Vancouver and Lower Mainland Multicultural Family Support Services Society (VLMMFSS) to specifically tackle domestic violence in immigrant populations. The VLMMFSS uses language and culture as tools to make domestic violence counseling services more accessible to immigrants and refugees struggling with cultural and language barriers.

Assanand knows the plight of being a refugee all too well. She recalls how, in 1972, the South Asian community in Uganda was given a three-month deadline to get out of the country, leaving behind frozen bank accounts, seized properties and shattered dreams. The Ugandan exodus forced her and her family to abandon their well-structured lives to flee to Canada with very little to their name. Now director of the VLMMFSS, Assanand says her experiences as a refugee have given her a unique insight to establish a successful model for immigrant women and children who have had to struggle with domestic violence.

“Both as an immigrant and a refugee I felt the loss. As an immigrant you have the time to say goodbye and you make a decision to leave the country. When you are a refugee, you have no choice, you just have to leave.”

Refugees face the burden of trying to reestablish their lives in a foreign culture with language barriers and little or no community support, a challenging task for even the strongest of hearts.

Applying her experiences to help others
Assanand began her career as a social worker for the Immigration Service Center, primarily dealing with cases affecting the South Asian community. There, she found that she was making great progress.

“People accepted me as a worker,” she says.

Assanand saw positive changes in the manner in which people related to her because of their shared culture. As the cultural boundaries were broken, she was able to work successfully in ways that a social worker from a different cultural background may have not been able to.

Noting the success of cultural relatability, in 1991 Shashi established the VLMMFSS with the collaboration of social services and the B.C. Ministries of Justice and Education, as well as transition houses. The VLMMFSS focuses on counseling women and children facing domestic and sexual abuse, utilizing culture and language as tools. The society offers services in 24 different languages, allowing women and children to share their stories and receive counseling in their native tongue, thus making information more likely to be communicated successfully. The cultural diversity offered by VLMMFSS also helps women understand that domestic abuse isn’t something that is culturally specific.

“There is a sense of denial, not just in immigrant communities, but in all communities. There is a lot of reluctance accepting that a woman is equal to a man. There are control issues in the relationship and that’s why domestic violence occurs. It is something that happens across all cultures.” Assanand explains.

Understanding that what they are experiencing is something experienced across all cultural borders is an important step for immigrant women. This creates a sense of community and an intrinsic support system for the women.

Now in its 24th year, the society helps approximately 1,600 women and children annually, garnering Assanand awards like the 2014 YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Community Building and the MOSAIC Human Rights Award, among others. However, there wasn’t always open dialogue in the media and ethnic communities about domestic violence because of fear of stigmatization.

“When I started talking in the mainstream media, I was criticized by community media for ‘washing their dirty linen in public,’” says Assanand.

The lack of reliable statistics is another struggle for Assanand and her mission. According to her, there are a lot of domestic violence cases that go unreported for fear of stigmatization by the community, as well as the unavailability of recording systems in languages other than French and English.

Through Assanand’s hard work and liaison with governmental and non-governmental agencies, we may be a step closer to combating domestic violence.