With its Christchurch base destroyed, and increasing demand for its services, Shakti Community Council is going to establish an ethnic women's support service in Dunedin.
Shakti founder Farida Sultana will visit the city next month to search for suitable premises for the service to provide crisis and non-crisis support and advocacy.
The organisation started in Auckland in 1995 after Ms Sultana immigrated to New Zealand from the UK, via Iran and Bangladesh.
As a survivor of domestic violence, she became aware there were other women like her who had overcome the patriarchal societies they lived in, and so set up Shakti, the first ethnic women's refuge in the country.
The service, which runs four refuges, drop-in centres and a 24-hour crisis line, now covers Auckland and the Central North Island, but its South Island base in Christchurch was destroyed during the earthquakes.
With uncertainty around re-establishing in Christchurch, and reports from social agencies about the increasing demand for ethnic women's support services in Dunedin, the city seemed an appropriate place to establish a new centre.
"At the moment we are just setting up a base. We are just going to start on a small scale," Ms Sultana said.
While here, she will hold further talks with women's networks and search for volunteers to run the drop-in centre alongside a part-time employee.
"It's not a full refuge. We will set up a drop-in centre where women could come and talk to someone from their own ethnic background. We connect clients with lawyers and counsellors and then we work with the local refuge."
If demand warranted it in the future, and funding was available, a full ethnic refuge would be established.
Although she acknowledged the work Te Whare Pounamu Dunedin Women's Refuge was doing, she believed a "cultural dynamic" was needed by many Asian and Middle Eastern women.
"A lot of women who call us would not call anyone else," she said.
