Today representatives from YW Calgary joined the Government of Alberta, our community partners and those with lived experience as we celebrated the important changes made to index social benefits like Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped (AISH) and Income Support with inflation. These long-overdue increases to benefits will have a direct impact on women’s lives and [...]
October is End Poverty Month here in Calgary we know that creating communities where women thrive is dependent on ensuring they have access to a fair, living wage. When the minimum wage went up to $15 per hour, we celebrated because it meant that vulnerable individuals in our community employed at minimum wage jobs [...]
Mother’s Day is bittersweet day at YW. Women who find their way to YW are often fleeing abuse, experiencing poverty, homelessness or isolation. Some have left their homes because they’re no longer safe and some have stayed because they know leaving could make things worse or will enter them into the cycle of poverty. [...]
Angela was a client of YWCA Mary Dover House transitional housing multiple times from 2004-2012. She suffered many traumas in childhood and managed her pain through the use of drugs and alcohol. Many of her stays at YWCA Mary Dover House transitional housing ended in evictions, but she was always able to return, receive support, [...]
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 [...]
