Andrea Hamm, a counselor at the University of the Virgin Islands' St. Thomas campus, recently served as a regional expert in a batterer's intervention project sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

As a member of the team, Hamm reviewed and evaluated the existing batterer programs in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries and assisted in an extensive review of batterer intervention programs currently employed in the United States. Following the review, team members decided to develop a batterer intervention manual for CARICOM.

Hamm served as a contributing editor for the manual which is titled Partnership for Peace. It is designed to help men eliminate violence from their relationships. The team also designed a program to conduct training workshops in countries that agree to utilize the manual and to promote the effort with local magistrate courts as an alternative to sending batterers to jail without addressing their underlying problems. The program has been implemented in Grenada, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Jamaica. It is anticipated that the program will be extended to other Caribbean communities within the next few months.

"The project was a very ambitious undertaking by UNIFEM," Hamm said. However, she said it was necessary to address the increasing incidents of domestic violence throughout the Caribbean. "Now that many places have programs and services to assist domestic violence victims and their children, the focus has shifted to helping the perpetrators of violence to stop being violent."

Hamm explained that the goal of the program is not family reunification. "The goal is clearly to end violence," she said. "We know that many victims of domestic violence reunite with their abusive partners, therefore it is incumbent upon communities to offer batter intervention programs."

Other members of the regional expert team included: Roberta Clark, director of UNIFEM's Regional Office in Barbados, Dr. Peter Weller and Dr. Veronica Salter, clinical psychologists from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Dr. Lincoln Douglas, an educational consultant in Trinidad, Dr. Diane Douglas, a clinical psychologist in Trinidad, Jackie Sealy-Burke, an attorney and director of a legal aid and counseling clinic in Grenada, Dr. Zuri Marshall, a clinical psychologist at St. Georges University in Grenada, and Hildur-Fjola Antonsdottir, UNIFEM's project manager.

Hamm has also collaborated with the following regional and international agencies: the United Nations Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, the United Nations Children's Fund, the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research Action, and the Canadian International Development Fund. She can be reached at 693-1136. More on the work of UNIFEM is available at this web site: www.unifem.org.