FAQ

What is Beauty Night?

Beauty Night is an award-winning, volunteer-run, registered Canadian charity that builds self esteem and changes lives of women and youth living in poverty through three streams of programs: wellness, life skills development and makeovers. Through this we give life-makeovers.

Who do you serve?

1/3 seniors
1/3 mothers & children
1/3 street youth & survival sex workers.

Homelessness, hunger, mental ill health and debilitating illnesses are some of the reasons our participants connect with us. 1 in 3 women have experienced sexual violence before the age of 18 year old. We find the numbers to be higher with our participants.

Why Beauty Night?

Vancouver Foundation released a study saying that Vancouverites feel isolated from their community. Many of our participants feel disconnected to their community too. Beauty Night offers a unique way to build community. When people get together to celebrate, laugh and become friends, they start believing change is possible. If people do not believe change is possible, change will not 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 DTES what assistance they want, they tell us they want to be treated with dignity and respect. Beauty Night because dignity is beautiful.

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.

I understand the need for wellness and life-skill development – why makeover?

Human contact is vital to human beings. Babies who are not touched will die. 90% of women in correctional facilities have deal with sexual abuse before the age of 18 year of age. The makeover is a great opportunity to reintroduce healthy touch in a non-threatening way and build relationships based on trust with the participants. Through the makeover program and life skill development we are able to connect our participants with resources to help them move forward in their life.

Is it just once a year?

We offer our programming 4 days per week. Thanks to our partnership with DTES Women’s Centre, we offer programming twice a week at 302 Columbia. Twice a week, we visit our community partners and offer our services at their facilities. Our community partners help with hunger, homelessness and/or health care. We work together to connect participants with resources that can help them change their lives.

How successful have you been?

In 12 years we have given over 26 000 life- makeovers thanks to over 500 volunteers.

Participants labeled “transient” participate on a weekly basis. 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.

* Through our volunteer training program, we have had health care and beauty industry professionals tell us that the training they receive through Beauty Night helps them develop better bedside manner for health care and for customer service.