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Womanspace hoping for financial security |
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Written by Sherri Gallant LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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Wednesday, 04 November 2009 |
They help women get on their feet financially, emotionally and socially, yet the people at Womanspace Resource Centre live with continual uncertainty about the organization’s financial future.
To that end, Dorothy McKenna hopes for great response to a Friday fundraiser called Making Waves, which promises an evening of great entertainment, guest speakers, food and drink. Making Waves is designed to honour women who’ve made waves themselves — a celebration and fundraiser for the women’s movement in southern Alberta at the University of Lethbridge Student Union Building ballroom, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Honoured guests for Friday’s lineup are Susan Scott, Calgary author of “All our Sisters: Stories of Homeless Women”; Maria Dunn, an Edmonton singer and songwriter; and Tanya Crosschild, executive director of Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society, in Lethbridge.
Crosschild has dedicated her life to helping First Nations families access culturally appropriate services. Scott, a former Calgary Herald reporter, interviewed more than 60 women facing homelessness across Canada for her book. Dunn’s music, which combines North American folk with Celtic influence, can be heard through a link at www.womanspace.ca.
“Our last day of funding for the financial literacy program was last Friday,” said McKenna, executive director.
“We don’t ever get ongoing or core funding. Essentially we’re in need of money to pay our staff, and while we do have an application in to Status of Women for phase two of the program, we won’t know until January whether we’ll get it, and then it will be March before we see any dollars.”
The four-week Financial Literacy workshops have been so successful it’s created a demand. The course teaches low-income women to manage money, often starting with a step as basic as opening a bank account, which many of the women have never had.
Women who’ve come out of abusive and controlling relationships, who are on social assistance and in other negative circumstances, have been empowered to rise above their challenges by what they’ve learned through the course. Some have been able to stop relying on food banks for the first time in years by learning how to budget and shop.
“We’ve been planning this event for about four years,” said McKenna. “The timing of it coincided with the end of our funding. I’m not saying we’ll never get funding again, but all of our funding has been short-term, time-limited project funding. And we get funding specific to a project and when it ends, it ends. The women’s financial program generated so much response, and so many clients and so much activity that we can’t just shut it down.”
Tickets are $40 and available at Womanspace, call 403-329-8338. Anyone who wants to support Womanspace but cannot attend can consider buying a ticket to donate back to the organization and enable a low-income woman to attend.
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