UWC nursing students raise awareness on gender-based violence

A group of 250 final-year nursing students braved the cold and early morning peak-hour traffic to raise money for victims of gender-based violence.

Team leader Jeremy Tarr said that their coursework presented the perfect opportunity for them to raise awareness and raise money for a campaign they feel affects so many people.

“When we started to think about what it is we were being taught‚ we realised that this is a much larger problem than we realised. When we started discussing it amongst ourselves we discovered that gender-based violence is something that actually affects all of us and that most of us knew someone who was a victim at some point‚” Tarr said.

The students decided to do something that will have the biggest impact and for this they had the idea to stand at intersections across Cape Town during peak traffic dressed in nursing attire.

“We were stationed at 21 intersections from the northern suburbs to the southern suburbs to Central Cape Town. The first day was nerve-wracking but we managed to survive. We are actually quite shocked that people would give so freely. Motorists were hooting at us‚ they were eager to support us‚” he said.

The students managed to fill 300 jars of money and the big task of counting the funds lay ahead for them. The money will be going to a shelter for abused women‚ a centre that cares for the disabled in Fisantekraal and a church in Belhar.

“Statistics on gender-based violence are horrible‚” said Rebecca McMahon‚ one of the students.

“I don’t know if enough is being down to raise awareness because when we approached people and explained to them what we are doing‚ people didn’t actually know what gender-based violence was.”