(Fremont County, WY) – It’s been nearly a year since Fremont County’s only domestic violence and sexual assault crisis shelter, Fremont County Alliance Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (FCAADVSA), experienced a flood that closed their building.
Though this nonprofit does not currently have a usable shelter, they have continued to provide help to numerous community members and now they need the community’s help with raising funds to rebuild from the ground up on the property they already own.
They have a goal to raise a total of $400,000 which would provide them with a new building that can better serve the community by being a duplex-style so both men and women can be housed at the same time, ADA compliant, increased security and pet-friendly – all things they were not able to accommodate before.
Nearly $200,000 has been raised already and earmarked for the building.
“It’s not going to be a huge facility,” shared Executive Director Sydney Allred. “We’re going to keep it a ranch-style single level, but it’s going to be very functional, and it’s going to meet the needs of the community, not just for the short term but going into the future.”
Fixing the shelter has been a goal for Sydney since she started working there in 2015. The flood combined with other building issues like a cracked foundation, and asbestos among other things has made the only option to demolish and start over.
“I wanted to fix that shelter because it wasn’t ADA accessible; I could not serve men and women in the same space, and we didn’t have a pet-friendly building. In the past, we’ve had to motel shelter when ADA accessibility is needed or for men if we already have women in the shelter. So this is going to solve those problems.”
COVID and the closing of other local resources have increased the need for the services, Sydney noted. This summer, the small team of four saw one of their biggest increases.
In July, August and September, they had a total of 123 primary victims, this number doesn’t include children. 82 had never been served by FCAADVSA. Months prior in April, May, and June, they only had 83 primary victims total, and only 53 of those were brand new.
“We’ve been so busy, which has made working on this shelter difficult because we’re going from crisis to crisis to crisis to crisis,” she said. “So it has meant that we’ve not been able to focus as much on the shelter as we hoped, but we’ve got to. We need to get the project done so that we can start focusing again, more in-depth on our clients and their needs.”
Their goal is to break ground in the spring of 2022 and hope to have a ribbon-cutting at their annual fundraiser, the Purple Ball.
Donations to this nonprofit can be made through their GoFundMe campaign found here.