Architecture Commons^™

Women's Shelters: Strategies To Empowerment, Rachel Raynor

City and Regional Planning

Working at a women’s social work site in Nicaragua, sparked my initial interest in researching and developing a typology of women’s shelters as an useful guide for determining and providing appropriate services. The goal is to create a typology that can be useful in determining what type of facility or shelter is the most effective for different women and the varying backgrounds and situations they are in. The desire to empower women was initiated by my first-hand experience in Nicaragua. There I saw many instances of intimate partner violence (IPV), as well as other, non-physical, forms of abuse. I never …