Archive for the ‘special occasions’ Category

Since the tender age of 11, Laura took giving back to a whole new level. This year, she spearheaded the movement that had over ten schools and hundreds of volunteers involved in knitting scarves for Beauty Night participants. On November 22nd and Christmas Eve, volunteers walked through the streets in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside handing out scarves to people who needed to be warm.

9 years ago, Caroline MacGillivray held the first Beauty Night at WISH Drop in Centre in Vancouver, BC. 14 volunteers took care of 73 women who attended the event. Many of the attendees live in poverty and experience violence. The opportunity to be in a safe space is something that is valued. The opportunity to be treated with dignity and respect made them feel good.

What started off as a special Christmas make over party, became a way to reintroduce touch to victims of violence. When attendees saw the physical change, they started to believe other types of change were possible. They attended literacy classes to show off their freshly painted nails, visited the health clinics to talk about how good they felt and walked out with an extra bounce in their step.

Working directly with the attendees, helped change the perception of many of our volunteers. One of our volunteers told us, “I go past these women every day on the bus but I don’t see them. Tonight I laughed and hugged so many of them. I can’t go back to not being able to see them.”

Last night we celebrated Beauty Night Society’s 9th birthday in Vancouver & Prince George. In Vancouver, the festivities started off with Christmas caroling. Volunteers, participants & their children sang Christmas tunes while creating Christmas cards. Thanks to accessing karaoke via youtube.com, we were able to get everyone singing and dancing.

Women and children gathered around the table with their children cutting and pasting ribbon to card stock. Womyn’s Gym coordinator, Tyla Flexman helped the women find stickers & pens as they sifted through the mountain of art supplies. Through words and art they found different ways to say thank you on paper. These cards were given to many of our volunteers.

Thanks to sponsorship through Liberty Wines & the the creative genius of Stacey Dallyn, the Beauty Night room was transformed into a winter wonderland. Wood land creatures sat under a White Christmas tree. Decorated in silver and gold, the words Beauty Night leapt out the fluffy snow that coated the walls.

Founding vice president of Beauty Night Society, Carly Teng was on hand as a roaming photographer. Carly captured pictures of the festivities of the evening. When our photography team was stuck in traffic, Carly stepped in and began to snap pictures of the women & Santa Claus.

Beauty Night board member, Dave Dickson’s eyes twinkled like St. Nick as women & children posed with him. Ten year old, Santa Helper, Katie Dalinghaus smiled pretty for the camera as she handed out the Nancy Black designed Xmas stockings to the women and children.

Stuffed to the brim with warm gloves, tooth brushes, dental care products, skin care, hair care, and body care products, the brightly coloured stockings Katie handed to the women. Like the first Beauty Night makeover event, the stockings contents came from stocking drive from individuals, churches, and businesses that wanted to contribute to Beauty Night’s 7th annual Xmas stocking drive. Led by Stocking Coordinator, Blair Lockhart, BC Hydro, TD Canada Trust, Ch2M Hill and Carrie Wheeler Talent Management and many more collected monies and products for us to fill those stockings.

Hundreds of high school students from York House, Little Flower Academy, Prince of Wales Mini School, Van Tech Secondary, Churchill Secondary School, Kwantlan College and many members of our community stitched the stockings. 5 - 7 year olds in sparks & brownie troupes decorated the stockings with their own personal flair.

Photographers Bruce & Sarah Culver set up the shots. Beauty Night volunteers & participants mugged for the camera. In the Beauty Night room, Tiffany Telford led the make over program. Carol Hogan, Ella Bak, Olivia Cammie, Meagan Stowe, Denise Van Gorkom, Margo Dalinghaus, and Amanda offered make up lessons, hair styling, manicures, mini massages and reiki.

Under the guidance of Kids Club coordinators, Alexa Fox and Sophia Hughes, women and children continued to create cards and occasionally break into a game of “jingle” tag.

While all the laughter- filled activity filled the room, Wendy Shuen and her volunteers bustled from room to room offering delectable goodies to the Beauty Night participants & volunteers. Almond cookies, fruit cake and mouth watering capicino chocolate biscuits satisfied our taste buds and our stomachs.

Throughout it all, DJ Joe, Tyla Flexman, Stacey Dallyn, Margo Dalinghaus, and Tiffany Telford bustled around making the event run smoothly.

Before the women headed out the door, Katie Dalinghaus gave them scarves created by Knit Fit Volunteers. Over 300 scarves were created by students from Elementary schools and High School students around the lower mainland. Spearheaded by Knit Fit founder & program coordinator, Laura Mah, hundreds of youth, seniors and children developed leadership skills and created scarves to keep people warm as they headed out into the snow.

In Prince George, our Beauty Night makeover event took place at Elizabeth Fry Society. Belly dance and self defense classes were held while women were offered make up application, hair styling, mini facials, manicures and much more.

Tonight - in Vancouver, we continue our celebrations at BC Women’s Hospital. Tiffany Telford, Ella Bak, Tyla Flexman, Caitlin Naylor and Lindsay McMillian will be handing out Xmas stockings and offering our makeover programming to the women in Fir Square.

As we head towards the end of the year, we have a few more events this week. In Toronto, the Xmas stockings & makeover program runs of December 17th - while Vancouver volunteers and contributors celebrate Beauty Night Society’s 9th Birthday on a Boat.

Beauty on the Boat enbarks at 7pm on December 17th. An evening on the sea with the music of Greg Cockerill and evening jaunt along the Vancouver coast. Tickets are $50 - proceeds to Beauty Night Society. For more information, please call 778-885-4526 or [email protected].

* For those who still have contributions to give, we are still handing out Xmas stockings and scarves on Xmas eve. Please contact us at [email protected].

Beauty Night Society events in Vancouver are a fusion of visual art and theatre. Tonight we start off at Robert Held Art Glass where the artists will be auctioning off pieces for Beauty Night. We can watch Robert Held create a piece that will be auctioned off for Beauty Night.

Here are the details:

Vancouver, BC…Robert Held Art Glass is pleased to announce their annual Sale & Gala Event, November 20th from 5pm – 9pm. Get into the holiday spirit early with this festive annual holiday Sale and Gala Event. This amazing collective will not only feature some of the work by BC’s best talents, but will provide the opportunity to shake hands with the artists themselves, including Robert Held, Richard Scheib, Katy Pattison, Jeremy Day Morris, Melanie Rowe, Lynne Chapelle, Joanne Andrighetti, and many more. The artists will entertain with beadwork demonstrations, glass demonstrations, create a collaborative holiday piece as well as have their popular ‘cooking with glass’ showcase with some tantalizing treats for our guests. While nibbling on the glass cooked food or sipping on the fine wine, you can also peruse the gallery and find some fantastic deals for your holiday shopping. With up to 50% off Robert Held Glass, a wide selection of jewellery, glass sculptures, beads, and fused glass work, you’re sure to fill your stockings!

The artists will also be providing pieces to be auctioned off for Beauty Night Society. Beauty Night provides marginalized women and youth tools to change their lives and heal themselves and their communities. Beauty Night National Executive Director & Founder, Caroline MacGillivray will chat about the what Beauty Night Society does and why. After that Robert Held will create a piece on site and auction it off to raise funds for Beauty Night Society. The Gala event is open to the public and the Pre-holiday sale continues all week from November 21 – 28, 10am – 6pm so come down to get the fires burning.

After the event, Beauty Night volunteers will be escorting Beauty Night participants to see tonight’s performance of Demon Voice. More details to come about the world premiere of Shawn McDonald’s play… tomorrow.

Have you been good or bad this year? By helping Beauty Night Society you will definitely be good!

Yaletown’s hottest club, Bar None hosts the “All I Want for Christmas” Fashion Show fundraiser. On December 3rd, 2009 make your way to 1222 Hamilton Street where you can be Naughty while being nice to Beauty Night Society. Featuring pin-up designs by Nancy Black. Tickets: $10 advance, $15 at door. Dress code: Your choice of suger or spice. Contact: Caroline McGillivray 778.885.4526 or visit www.beautynight.org to learn how this holiday gathering will get you to the top of Santa’s list as you help women and children in Vancouver’s downtown eastside with the tools to make positive lifestyle changes.

“Be a part of our cause, not a part of the problem”

Bring your credit card and cash. There will be lots of opportunities to give and receive with a silent auction items, raffle tickets, photos with Santa and his sexy elves. Vancouver’s leading pin-up fashion Designer Nancy Black, Luscious Dance and Sexy in Vancity dancers have donated their time to keep the cost affordable and enable you to bring your friends to kick off the season right. Book ahead as our venue has limited space. It is sure to be an amazing show and it is for a great cause: to provide marginalized women and youth tools to make positive life style choices to heal themselves and build healthy communities. The more money raised, the more people we can heal.

For 9 years Beauty Night Society has used makeover and development programs
To heal women and youth in our community. With outreach offices in Toronto , Vancouver and Victoria Beauty Night Society is proud to boast recently celebrating its 10,000th makeover. Over these years what started as a place to heal the spirit now provides fitness, nutritional, educational programs and the community needed to make positive lifestyle changes a way of life. We hope to see you there.

When Margo Dalinghaus of Liberty For Success invited Beauty Night Society Volunteers and participants to her Amazing Women’s Weekend, I was thrilled. I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for our participants and for our volunteers to develop leadership skills and for personal growth. Margo had offered to teach her inner beauty boot camp workshop to our participants and I wanted to have a frame of reference for the workshop before offering it to our participants. After participating in the weekend intensive, I believe all women should take this workshop! It was one of the most exhilarating intensives I have ever participated in.

Although seven of us from Beauty Night Society had signed up - volunteers, participants & myself, only three of us showed up at 7:30am on Saturday, November 7th. Together we sat in a cluster in a circle of women that we did not know. Women sat quietly looking at each other. We would smile politely across the circle. Many of us too tired to be nervous and wonder what journey we were about to embark on.

Perhaps if we knew how intense the work would be, we may have run. Thankfully we did not. Margo is a fantastic facilitator who guided us through the work. Many of the exercises released laughter, pain, sadness and anger. Through structured research based workshops, she guided us through visioning our future self to where we came from, to forgiveness, to where we are right now, and offered us tools to create our future selves.

Many of the women made some startling realizations and were able to release a great deal of rocks that they have been carrying for a long time. When we did a circle where Margo would ask questions such as “Were you a child when your parents got divorced?”, the production team would set up and give us a bead to slide onto a ribbon. By the end of that section, many of us shed tears. I found strength in realizing that many women carry their own string of beads that represent events they have experienced in their lives. One of the key factors of that was realizing that we are not alone. Many of us have gone through traumatic experiences. Some of us are crippled by those experiences where sickness manifests in our bodies. Others turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. Others bury our pain under a to do list that is so long it would take 10 lifetimes to achieve all that we drive ourselves to do.

Through my acting school experiences, I have done a great deal of work to release emotions attached to specific events in my life. One key thing about the Amazing Woman Weekend that made a profound difference to the emotional release work was that Margo is a trained therapist who was able to create a safe space. Instead of feeling like Humpty Dumpty at the end of the weekend, I was givwn the glue gun to put the pieces back together again. In the process of gluing, I felt stronger than I did before the weekend.

One of the women who attended the workshop was a former Beauty Night participant. Through the work she had done with Margo, she was able to forgive herself for some of the trauma she has experienced. Through healing, she was able to move away from the pattern of addiction and homelessness. For one of my Beauty Night participants, this was very healing to see how someone was able to heal and move forward with her life. For another woman in the circle, the weekend inspired her to leave an abusive partner. For a mother and daughter who attended, they were able to forgive themselves for a sibling’s death. The work was intense and deep. The relieve and joy experienced was profound.

For myself, it was an opportunity to see how this work can make a huge difference in the lives of all women. That statement includes myself. This weekend taught me that I need to open myself up to receive in my work with Beauty Night Society and my personal life. Although I love feeling like Santa Claus when I watch people’s eyes light up because of a direct impact of something that my contributors and I have created, it empowers other people when I receive what they want to give me. Perhaps this will open me up to believing that money can really help propel our mission forward.

For one of my Beauty Night participants, she was able to start to forgive herself for not being a good mother to her children. Through seeing that so many women have experienced addiction, abuse, childhood violence, sibling rivalry, poverty, eating disorders and much more helped her realize that she wasn’t alone. When she realized that many of us carry our own string of beads of trauma - including myself, she realized that there wasn’t such a divide between us. We are women and we do the best we can with what we are being given.

At the end of the workshop, we debriefed over dinner. One of the things we talked about was starting to save some money so we can do the Amazing Woman workshop in Mexico - together, as a team. Next on my to do list is to bring Dave Chen from DC Complete Financial in to talk to the women about how they can start dreaming bigger. After that adding Inner Beauty Boot Camp on our program schedule.

When we asked Beauty Night Society (BNS) volunteer and participants what they would like to experience, celebration and joy was something that everyone wanted. On October 26th, we put our Halloween committee’s concepts into action. Our decorating committee (participants, volunteers & board members) came in early to set the stage for the event to follow.

Cob webs, orange and black streamers adorned the ceiling, drawers, and walls of the room. The buzz of excitement filled the entire centre. Together our decorating committee worked together to create an environment of fun that our make over volunteers could still work within.

Make up Artists Tiffany Telford, Ella Bak and Amanda Gangoso met the requests of our volunteers and participants. Hairdresser, Gary Smith created hair for “Mili Cyrus” to zombies, vampires and many more. At our nail station, Margo Dalinghaus and Kate created glamour girl nails as easily as claws for the various types of claws that people wanted.

Participant Facilitator, DJ Joe and Kerry Parsons filled the cups with hot tea while Stephanie Scott and photographer, Aaron Chung offered chocolate treats to participants who wanted to pose for our Halloween photo shoot. Posing with their children, with their friends, the women playing in front of the camera. “Aaron Chung creates a safe space for the women to enjoy being captured on film. Together with our amazing group of volunteers, participants and board members - our Beauty Night Society (BNS) celebrations are a pleasure for all involved!” explains National Executive Director and Founder, Caroline MacGillivray.

Thanks to Make Over Program Facilitator, Tiffany Telford, the children included cookie decoration as part of their activities in our Kids’ Club activities. Kids’ Club Program Co-ordinators, Alex Fox and Sophia Hughes supervised the decoration of bat shaped cookies as well as creating Halloween Masks. In the past two months, Hughes and Fox have worked together to create a fantastic program geared towards our participants’ children.

“Originally Katie Benjamin (Founder of Womyns Gym) wanted to offer child care for our Womyns Gym program participants. When we moved Womyns Gym from Tuesday and Thursdays to Monday and Wednesdays, I felt we needed to offer child care to our other program participants’ children. It wouldn’t be fair to only have it for one program. Alexa and Sophia have created a program that the kids can call their own. I am thrilled to have such amazing program coordinators. When I asked if we could create program to foster healthy self esteem and incorporate 20 minutes of physical activity every hour, Alexa and Sophia went above and beyond what I asked for. I know Kids’ Club is a huge benefit to the kids and to their parents - who participant in our other programming.”

Although we planned pumpkin carving and face painting as part of our Mom & Tot Nutrition program, the children were included in the photo shoot and face painting during the festivities on the 26th. Some of the children came dressed in costumes as did our volunteers. The rooms were filled with kangaroos, cats, vampires, zombies, and witches.

For those who did not bring costumes, Denise Van Gorkum and Amanda played fairy godmother. There women and children created magic wands, crowns, necklaces and witch hats. The opportunity to create their own costumes was incredibly fun and empowering. Watching faces filled with dejection due to forgetting a costume change to delight as they created their own was heart warming.

We were thrilled to have Womyns Gym volunteers get cat noses & whiskers or moustashes painted on their faces before training the women. We were thrilled to welcome Katie Gove from Telus’ Community Giving to our festivities. Beauty Night Society’s Womyns Gym is a proud recipient of Telus Community Giving.

The only dark spot in the evening was the fact that some of the numbers were down. When we followed up with participants the following evening, concerns of swine flu kept some of our participants at home. Although we would have loved to have seen more of our participants (we had about 25 participants throughout the entire night), we are glad that they are abiding by health policies that Beauty Night Society has shared with volunteers and participants. Rest and time to heal is vitally important during the cold and flu season!

Huge thanks to all of our volunteers, community partners - especially the PHS Life Skills Centre, Telus Community Giving, and of course our participants! When we work together, we can make a huge impact in our communities!