About Beauty Night
From a simple act of kindness, a movement was born. Over 22 years, Beauty Night has offered over 85,000 makeovers thanks to 500+ volunteers.
We are governed by a committed Board of Directors and led by our Executive Director and Founder, Caroline MacGillivray. You can read more about our origin story below.
Our Story
How We Got Started
Caroline MacGillivray was concerned about the conditions for survival sex trade workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. In 2000, she began volunteering at WISH Drop in Centre.
One night a woman came to the centre in distress. She didn’t want to eat, speak, or for the staff to call 911. When Caroline asked what she wanted, she said she wanted to, “Feel clean.” When a shower came available, the woman was given a towel supplies. Afterwards when searching through the donations of clean clothes, she found a curling iron and plugged it in. When it heated up, the woman realized she wasn’t able to raise her arms to curl her hair. Caroline offered to do it for her.
Afterwards, the woman hugged Caroline and left the centre with an extra bounce in her step. Every time Caroline came to volunteer, the woman asked her to do her hair and makeup. Within a few weeks, Caroline became very popular with the other women and proposed a “beauty night” at WISH to better meet the needs of all of the women.
Where We Are Now
Since then, Beauty Night became a registered charity and serves an average of 300 women each week. Caroline is now best known as the Executive Director and founder of Beauty Night Society.
Our Mission
Beauty Night builds self-esteem and changes the lives of women and youth living in poverty through three streams of programming: wellness, life skills development and makeovers.
Our Vision
We believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Regardless of socioeconomic status, no one deserves to be invisible and isolated from community.
Beauty Night offers a unique way to build community. When people get together to celebrate, laugh and become friends, they start believing that change is possible. If people do not believe that change is possible, change won’t happen. We welcome our participants as they are. They come in, make friends, access services, and many become leaders in their community.
When we ask women living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside what assistance they want, they tell us they want to be treated with dignity and respect.
Many of our participants have become volunteers. Through accessing our life-makeover program, many develop the confidence to reconnect with friends, family and community. We have been able to redirect our participants to volunteer opportunities and employment opportunities with our community partners.
Thanks to our community partnerships with organizations that provide food, shelter, and health care we are able to connect our participants with our community partners.
