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. 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 from 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 dealt with sexual abuse before the age of 18. The makeover is a great opportunity to reintroduce healthy touch in a non-threatening way. It also allows us to build relationships based on trust with the participants. Through the makeover program and life skills development we are able to connect our participants with resources to help them move forward in their lives.
Is it just once a year?
We offer our programming 4 days per week. Each week we serve 300 women and children. Thanks to our partnership with DTES Women’s Centre, we offer programming once a week at 302 Columbia. Three times 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?
Since 2000 we have given over 50,000 life-makeovers.
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.
How Can I help?
Donate/ Spread the Word / Volunteer / Raise Money
Q. Can I get a tax receipt for making a donation? A. Thank you for wanting to support our cause. We rely heavily on financial donations. For financial donations over $20 we can issue charitable tax receipts. You can donate directly at www.beautynight.org.