Royal LePage opens the door to safety for women and children fleeing domestic violence

TORONTO, June 10, 2015 /CNW/ - Royal LePage announced today another step forward in its efforts to help abused women and their children find help.

The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation has been named a national partner in Sheltersafe.ca - a new online resource - along with RBC Foundation. With this partnership, the real estate company continues its commitment to helping women and children who have experienced domestic violence seek support at a local shelter. Any time of day or night through Sheltersafe.ca, women can find help close to home.

Funds will be provided to underwrite the costs of the new website. Sheltersafe.ca utilizes a clickable map to help women connect quickly with the shelter in their community. In addition to being a safe place to stay, shelters have 24 hour phone lines to support women in crisis.

Sheltersafe.ca provides a single point of information for women seeking safety by quickly identifying a shelter in a specific geographic area. The map provides 24-hour emergency telephone numbers, while protecting the confidential locations of shelters.

"Royal LePage has long been known as a leader in real estate industry technological innovation. We felt it was important to apply the same focus to our Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, as another way to show our commitment to helping women and children who have experienced domestic violence," said Phil Soper, President & CEO of Royal LePage. "The Sheltersafe.ca website is the only one of its kind in Canada and is accessible on all platforms including the web, on smartphones and tablets. In this way, the needs of women living in remote, rural and urban areas will be served."

Every day, shelter workers provide assistance to women by helping them develop personalized safety plans. Shelters also provide support to employers, friends and relatives of women who are being abused. Sheltersafe.ca quickly points concerned individuals to someone who can provide assistance.

"The key to bringing safety to women who have experienced abuse is for them to know that support is available at a local women's shelter," said Shanan Spencer-Brown, Executive Director of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. "Sheltersafe.ca will make it easier for them to find this help."

Facts about domestic violence:

• Every night, 4,600 Canadian women and their 3,600 children stay at a shelter to escape domestic violence.
• There are 450 shelters from coast to coast providing a safety net for women and their children. Each year 100,000 women and their children seek refuge in a shelter.
• The majority of children in shelters are younger than age five.
• Every six days, on average, a woman in Canada is murdered by a current or former partner.

About Royal LePage Shelter Foundation
The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation is Canada's largest public foundation dedicated exclusively to funding women's shelters and ending violence against women and children. Through agent commission donations and the fundraising activities of the Royal LePage network, the foundation has raised more than $20 million to help provide a safe haven and new beginnings for more than 30,000 women and children every year. To break the cycle of violence, the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation also supports violence prevention and education programs. All funds raised by Royal LePage offices remain in their local community and because Royal LePage pays all administrative costs, 100 per cent of all money and effort goes toward this important cause. For more information visit: royallepage.ca/shelter

About Royal LePage
Serving Canadians since 1913, Royal LePage is the country's leading provider of services to real estate brokerages, with a network of over 16,000 real estate professionals in more than 600 locations nationwide. Royal LePage is the only Canadian real estate company to have its own charitable foundation, the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, dedicated to supporting women's and children's shelters and educational programs aimed at ending domestic violence. Royal LePage is a Brookfield Real Estate Services Inc. company, a TSX-listed corporation trading under the symbol TSX:BRE. For more information visit: royallepage.ca

SOURCE Royal LePage Shelter Foundation