About Harmony House
Founded in 1986, Harmony House has been serving the Ottawa community through transitional housing and wrap-around support for women and children escaping abusive circumstances.
Unlike emergency shelters, Harmony House offers longer-term stays in fully-furnished, independent apartments. To date, they have helped more than 2,500 women and their children rebuild their lives. Services offered include:
Trauma-informed counselling and mental health support.
An in-house food bank available to current and former residents.
On-site childcare and summer camp programs.
Scholarships, career training and financial literacy workshops.
Due to the critical need for their services, Harmony House currently has approximately 80 families on a waitlist, and nearly 80 per cent of their funding relies on donations, making community support essential.
Why It Matters
Gender-based violence remains a crisis,
Despite the lack of sustained public attention, violence against women in Canada is widespread and has long-lasting impacts on individuals, families, communities, and the country as a whole.
Every day, an estimated 3,650 women and 3,206 children sleep in shelters to escape violence at home.
One in two Canadian women (44%) report experiencing psychological, physical, or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
One woman or girl is killed every 48 hours in Canada.
This is more than a private issue—it’s a public emergency.
It has ripple effects,
Violence against women doesn’t end with the victim:
Children who witness violence at home are twice as likely to develop psychiatric disorders.
These cycles can continue across generations, affecting whole communities.
In 2009, the estimated economic cost of violence against women in Canada was $7.4 billion—a number that is likely even higher today, as police-reported intimate partner violence against women increased 19% between 2014 and 2022.
