Personal safety is an issue for most people, especially for women. But how can women learn the skills and techniques needed to protect themselves in case of an unexpected attack?
Safe and Sound is a safety training company that specializes in personal safety training to individuals and corporations. Currently owned by Debra deWaal, a former Calgary police officer, Safe and Sound offers two levels of training: Level I is a four hour course covering issues of planning for your own safety, how to react in a life-threatening situation, essential self-defense skills, and practising those skills in a "padded attacker" situation. Level II is an eight hour course and goes beyond the first level in the areas of defense against an attacker with a weapon, defending yourself against multpile attackers, and awareness and information regarding date rape drugs. All of Safe and Sound's instructors are female Calgary and Edmonton police constables -- women who obviously have a lot of experience dealing with violent situations. The kinds of women who enroll in the courses are varied, from all walks of life. "A large portion of our business is done through corporate work, meaning a company will book a program for their female employees to take it," says deWaal. "In that case, the ages vary greatly as do their backgrounds and reasons for taking the program. In the public classes we have a lot of mother/daughter combinations that sign up, sometimes women who have experienced a violent crime or had close calls, all the way through to women who are proactive and want to know how to avoid dangerous situations. The youngest we have had in our course has been 8 and the oldest was 80!" In Edmonton, you can reach Safe and Sound by calling Brenda VanDerPutten at 481-5228.