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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/magalu-brazil-domestic-violence-help-employees/>
"After nearly 10 years of harassment, threats and beatings from her husband —
including a blow to the head while she was holding their then one-year-old
daughter — Adriana (not her real name) finally mustered up the courage to take
action.
But when she did, it wasn’t friends or family she turned to for help. It was
her employer, Brazil’s largest retailer, Magazine Luiza, better known locally
as Magalu.
Adriana, now a company secretary with Magalu, was the first employee to contact
the company’s Canal Mulher (Women’s Channel) hotline. The hotline was set up in
2017 after the murder of 37-year-old Denise Neves dos Anjos, a Magalu store
manager who was stabbed to death by her husband.
Few companies have such a hotline, and at those that do, an employee might
expect a referral to social services. But Magalu’s model goes far deeper. Upon
learning about her case, the company immediately got to work helping Adriana
find a new apartment in Sao Paulo so she could get away from her husband.
Magalu also took care of Adriana’s rental payments — no reimbursement was
expected — and acted as the guarantor for her rental contract. It provided
additional mental health therapy and legal support.
“For the first time I felt I wasn’t by myself –– that I would get some help
with the whole process of freeing myself from my abusive husband,” the
42-year-old employee told Reasons to Be Cheerful via a translator.
Adriana was the first of nearly 700 female employees that Magalu has helped to
extract from abusive relationships over the past four years. During this time,
the company has paid to relocate over 100 of these women and supported almost
all of them legally, financially and emotionally. It’s an extraordinary level
of involvement from a corporate entity in a matter most companies view as too
complex and legally dicey to intervene in."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
