Led by Executive Director Cassandra Richardson, Safe Haven Foundation teamed up with local artist Lucinda “LaRich” Audain to inspire St. Dominic High School students by having them paint positive messages on the bathroom stalls at the school over the midterm break.
The campaign was in commemoration of Gender Awareness Month and focused on relationship abuse, targeting teenage relationships.
The messages were painted over a two-day period on Tuesday, October 8, and Wednesday, October 9, primarily by students under LaRich’s guidance. Students got a chance to not just indulge their creativity to paint inspiring messages, but also to pick up useful community service hours in the process.
The following are some examples of the messages:
“If you don’t value yourself, then you will always be attracted to people who don’t value you either.”
“Find a heart that will love you at your worst and arms that will hold you at your weakest.”
“Sometimes when things are failing apart, they may actually be falling into place.”
“A relationship doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be real.”
“Never bend you head, hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.” ~Helen Keller
“You alone are enough; you have nothing to prove to anybody.” ~Maya Angelou.
“Whoever is trying to bring you down is already below you.”
“I am not what has happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” ~Carl Jung.
“I believe happy girls are the prettiest.” ~Audrey Hepburn
“Stop hating yourself for everything you aren’t. Start loving yourself for everything you are.”
“You are capable of amazing things.”
“Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.”
The concept was developed through meetings with members of Safe Haven where parties discussed what messages they wanted to convey and the look and style of the artwork amongst other things. Parties also conducted research on self-love and gender.
LaRich said she loves working with the youth as she has been doing with her own foundation, Funtopia Youth Initiative, where she helps to build the self-esteem of youngsters and helps in their development, growth and pushing their community participation. It was therefore easy for her to get involved in this project.
Appointed as Executive Director of Safe Haven in 2016, Richardson is a daughter of the soil, who was born at St. Rose Hospital in St. Maarten. She attended Milton Peters College (MPC) and left St. Maarten in 1996 to pursue her Bachelor’s degree, double majoring in Written Communications and Environmental Studies at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, where she also lived and worked for 10 years.
She then pursued a Master’s in Communications and Social Justice at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, in 2004. She then returned to the same university in 2013 and graduated with her Master’s in Social Work in 2015, while working as a manager at a settlement agency for new-comer immigrants. There she developed and designed programmes for youth and women and designed programmes and services to address mental health concerns of new immigrants to Windsor.
During her time in Windsor, she was a part of many community initiatives and sat on various boards. She was the chair of Windsor Youth Centre, a centre that caters to homeless youth. She was a board member on the city’s child welfare organisation, the HIV/AIDS Committee of Windsor and was a committee member of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) organisation, Windsor Pride.
Safe Haven Foundation runs a home for battered and abused women and children.
