A year after the first “100 Women Who Care” presentation, 81 women came together at the Westlock Community Hall Nov. 15 to donate $8,100 to the local Hope Resource Centre.
100 Women Who Care was a local initiative started up in November 2016 by Deneen Ducharme, who got the idea after researching similar groups online.
The idea is simple: 100 women (or however many women can come out to each meeting) gather together every three months to donate $100 each to a local cause.
Three non-profit organizations appear at each meeting to make a case for receiving the money. The group members then vote via secret ballot on which organization will get the pooled cash.
At the Nov. 15 meeting, they heard two presentations from the Hope Resource Centre and the Friends of the Westlock Library Society.
Tammy Round, who acted as a master of ceremonies, said a third non-profit group was invited but declined to make a presentation, feeling they weren’t ready.
The money will “contribute significantly” towards new cost-free trauma-informed support groups for women and children in the community, said Hope Resource Centre executive director Sylvia Yoder.
In these trauma-informed support groups, participants will learn to recognize their resilience and strengths, as well as access peer supports and build pathways towards healing.
“Our hope is these courageous survivors will experience validation, hope and healing through these trauma-informed support groups as they build a ‘new normal’ in the reconstruction of their lives,” Yoder said.
These programs, while mostly targeted towards women, will include a healing circle for Indigenous victims of relationship violence and a support group specifically for children dealing with divorce, separation, death or abandonment.
During her presentation, Yoder also delved into some of the details around the operation of the Hope Resource Centre, which is run by a volunteer board but employs one full-time employee, a contracted therapist and bookkeeper.
Their annual operating budget is $125,000. They partly rely on donations, fundraising casinos and the annual Dance 4 Hope event, as well as various government grants.
Yoder said they were grateful and thrilled to have been the ‘recipient charity’ for the donation from 100 Women Who Care, which will benefit many people in the community and endorse their projects for provincial and federal funding consideration.
“Our board believes this is an essential service,” she said.
Although they were a little short of being “100 Women Who Care”, Round said they were a little surprised by how quickly November came after they had last met in September to donate $11,600 to the Homeland Housing Foundation.
“We didn’t realize how fast November came up,” she said. “It’s the time of the year when all the renewals came up at the same time.’
That said, the 100 Women Who Care group started out with just 90 members, “so we know we can gain some momentum in the next quarter,” Round said.
Round said their next meeting will be in late March 2018 and they will be returning to the Ramada Inn in Westlock.
