“In 1907, a young woman arrived by train in Calgary and looked for a place to stay. She went to all of the boarding houses and hostels, and finally began knocking on doors of private residences, but she could not find a room.” You see at the time young women were not desirable boarders as [...]
Last week was the end of the 2013-2014 YWCA Winter Emergency Response (WER) program. The YWCA WER program first opened in 2012, in collaboration with the Calgary Homeless Foundation, to prevent freezing deaths when shelters are at capacity in the cold winter months. Over the past six months, we have supported more than 640 women [...]
On May 1, 2014, the YWCA kept our temporary winter shelter open for one more night to host our fundraising event YWCA KEEP A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS®. The event took participants through the experience of spending the night at our YWCA Winter Emergency Response (WER) program, offered during the coldest months of the year [...]
You have seen her on the train, taking her children to a doctor’s appointment. She struggled to find enough money to pay the $3 fare. It came out of her budget for groceries. You have seen her at work. She hid her bruises from you with a long sweater in the middle of a hot [...]
On May 1st, YWCA KEEP A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS® participant Pat Walsh will line up outside the YWCA to guarantee a place to sleep in our former gymnasium, which has been converted to an emergency shelter. For many women in Calgary, this process is a familiar one as the YWCA Winter Emergency Response program [...]
Imagine trying to find a safe place to sleep during the cold nights in Calgary when the temperature dips down so low you feel the chill spreading through your bones. Your gloves are full of holes. The people who pass by ignore you. All you want is a warm place to sleep so you do [...]
Last week a radio station in Calgary burned $5,000 in a publicity stunt. The radio station asked Calgarians in a poll if they should incinerate $5,000 or give it away to the winner of a draw. According to the station, 54 per cent of tens of thousands of listeners voted to burn the cash. Last [...]
On November 6, 2013, Alberta’s women’s shelters recorded the number of women and children supported for the annual ‘day in the life’ count. Full provincial shelter results can be found online. […]
This week, The Current from CBC is highlighting the stories of several Canadians struggling to survive on minimum wage. Today’s episode focused on Acsana Fernando, a refuge from Bangladesh who is now living in Toronto. The Current reports Acsana makes $10.25 an hour, which is the minimum wage in Ontario. Her usual monthly pay after [...]
