Why Project Courage

In society, there is a tendency to tackle a single problem at a time because tackling all problems appears overwhelming and undoable. Certainly for one agency it would be problematic to help an individual who has a history of various problems, let alone a whole community. However, if the different agencies that offer services to that individual or that community put their expertise together, such an endeavor would certainly be possible.

Through Project Courage, Harbor House of Central Florida becomes the facilitating and leading agency in an attempt to bring partners together in order to provide a variety of services to one community. These collaborations work toward the eradication of domestic abuse from through the implementation of the expertise of each organization. Through the ending of abuse, a whole cluster of other issues could be affected, as seen in Figure 3, which could rid a community of problems that prevent it from growing and evolving in a healthy manner.

The importance of the project does not only lie in the fact that the statistics say that domestic abuse is a major problem in our society, that it is the only crime increasing and brings death to the door steps of families and friends. The importance of the project can be realized when it becomes clear that domestic abuse affects every aspect of a community and society. Understanding that a problem that is so far reaching needs to encompass a collaborative response at a variety of levels (i.e. individual, family, community and society) is key to eradicating violence.