Walk a Mile in Her Shoes will celebrate its 12th annual walk this Thursday in downtown Orlando. The event raises funds to support Harbor House and its life-saving, life-changing services for domestic violence survivors. How? Men trade their shoes for women’s shoes and literally walk in them.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Harbor House Of Central Florida has several events planned.

More than 300 volunteers and members of law enforcement set out across Orange County Saturday to raise awareness about domestic abuse.

Their findings revealed domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% after jurisdictions imposed pandemic-related lockdown orders. “If we look at different data sources over the last 20 years or so, we had seen declines actually in domestic violence so what I’ll say is the pandemic has set us back in terms of our ability to address domestic violence,” University of Central Florida professor and chair with the department of criminal justice, Catherine Kaukinen, said. She is one of the authors of the new study that focused on the impacts the pandemic had during 2020 on domestic abuse. Domestic violence is still completely underreported,” Sperzel said. “We really saw an increase in the number of people seeking out our outreach services and our community services and also our legal program.