As domestic violence rises 18 months into the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Assistance League of Greater Cincinnati and the Montgomery Women’s Club are taking donations of new, unused household goods Oct. 23 for survivors and their children.
Audrey Stehle of Mount Lookout, the league’s local chapter president, said recent reports about the spiraling domestic violence homicide rate in Ohio underscores the needs of people leaving violent homes.
Domestic violence:Slayings in Ohio up 62% through the pandemic; record 15 children killed
“We knew when the pandemic started, we had signs right away that it was just, I don’t know the right word, everything about the pandemic affected this group of people we know very dramatically,” Stehle said.
On Saturday, Oct. 23, two drop-off sites will be set up from 10 a.m. until noon to accept donations:
- Aeropointe Medical Building, 4260 Glendale-Milford Road, Blue Ash
- Kroger Marketplace, 4613 Marburg Ave., Oakley, run by high school students.
All items for donation must be new. Needed are twin-size blankets and sheet sets, double-size blankets and sheet sets, bathroom rugs, towels, washcloths, shower curtains and rings, laundry baskets, cooking pots and pans, dish sets and silverware.
The items will be used for the Assistance League’s 11-year-old New Beginnings program, for survivors and children who fled violent homes, have been living in shelters or hotel rooms and are set to move to new homes. New Beginnings has assisted 1,677 women and 1,716 children.
The all-volunteer Assistance League has helped nearly 65,000 domestic violence survivors since 1998.
Stehle said the Montgomery Women’s Club has been doing such a donation drive for the Assistance League at least four years. Last year, due to pandemic restrictions, the club and the league set up the drive-thru location in Blue Ash.
“We didn’t know if people would show up,” Stehle said, but the drive collected an estimated $3,000 of goods. Some of those items, Stehle said, came from a truck driver passing through on Interstate 71 and heard a radio notice of the event, stopped at a store to buy items to donate and came to the venue. “He got out of his truck and said, ‘I have a sister who was killed by domestic violence, and I had to help you.’”
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