Medicine Hat Women's Shelter Society annual general meeting

By Jessie Weisner

WOMENS SHELTER AGM

Women’s shelter makes fundraising announcement at annual general meeting

Sep 25, 2019 | 4:16 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society’s annual general meeting was held Wednesday. They presented awards, reviewed financial information and announced a fundraising goal.

The organization has been busy over the last year, helping 955 adults and 362 children with housing, emergency and support services. 267 adults and 140 children used the phoenix safe house emergency shelter, and 642 adults with 131 children were helped with outreach services.

That was largely thanks to $324,166 in donations in the 2018-2019 year.

Some of those funds went towards operating new outreach services.

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“Our outreach services that we opened at the ridge offsite have been really great and that was our goal, that people would be able to go there and not have to come to the shelter,” says Natasha Carvalho, executive director of the Medicine Hat Women’s Shelter Society.

It was also the first year the organization began accepting men into the emergency shelter. It was discovered that men made up roughly seven per cent of outreach clients, and there was a need for this type of service.

As a result, nine men and one transgender person have accessed the emergency shelter since October 2018. 90 men also accessed outreach services from September 2018 to July 2019.

“We sort of had a few calls and we had some males in our groups and outreach and on phone calls, so in different areas of our programs but not the physical shelter, so then we though that must be the last gap, lets try to do that. So it worked,” says Carvalho.

Five directors also stepped down, including Keith King, Carol Heese, Sandy Redden, Amanda Symynuk, and Heather Koch. The three new directors include Nicole Anhel, Miles Thorson and Kristine RusselL.

2020 will mark the shelter’s 40^th anniversary, so they’ve created a fundraising goal.

“The board has decided to set aside that money so from now until the end of our fiscal year we’re going to match any donation that comes in and try to create another $150,000 or more if possible,” says Carvalho.

They will be matching all donations up to $150,000 with the goal of putting $300,000 in their endowment fund.

The fund was launched in 2013 by the Community Foundation of Southeastern Alberta. The money dedicated to the fund won’t be spend, instead the interest made on it will help support the shelter long term.

“We know that’s what’s going to sustain us long term,” says Carvalho. “We just know we can’t always rely on government funding and we can’t rely on community always, people get stretched thin. So we just want to have a rainy day fund to make sure we can keep these services open because unfortunately I think family violence is going to be here for a while and we need places for people to go.”

Carvalho adds shelter staff will be coming up with new ideas for fundraisers in order to reach the goal.