Xmas Stocking Drive

Beautilicious News June 21 -28th

June 21, 2010 By caroline Leave a Comment

Good Morning Everyone,

Product Contributions:

Huge thanks to everyone for your continued support Special thanks to those who responded so quickly to my facebook & twitter requests for more nail polish. The immediate response offering to contribute polish from your personal collections, contribute monies to purchase more supplies and spreading the word among your friends was overwhelming. It reminded me of how Beauty Night originally started. In the fall of 2000, I sent an email out asking for contributions of hair, nail, skin, dental and body care products to hold the first Beauty Night. People forwarded that email and I started hearing from people who I didn’t know that had contributions of products and money to purchase what we needed.

Beauty Night Volunteers Dressed up as Santa’s Helpers Handing out Xmas Stockings, Hand-knitted
Scarves, Oranges and Cookies and Spreading Xmas Cheer on December 24, 2009!

Since then we have given over 11 000 makeovers in 9.5 years. Our original concept has evolved from makeovers to life-makeovers. Our programming includes personal development, literacy, child minding, physical fitness, goal setting and mentorship. We can no longer accept gently used products as we are following Health & Safety Canada’s Guidelines. We would love to accept samples and new products or monies to purchase products. In the fall, we will begin our annual Xmas Stocking Drive. We will be filling up 600 stockings that Ms. Claus will hand out on Xmas eve to the women who participate in our programs. If you are interested in being involved in this program, please email us at info@beautynight.org with your contact information and how you would like to get involved.

Beauty Night Welcomes David Chen as our treasurer

David K Chen:

Complete Financial’s owner and primary financial advisor is David Chen, BSc., BA, CSA (Certified Senior Advisor)

David is a technical scuba diver, motorcyclist and family man with a very mixed background of education, real world experience and financial services training.

Born and raised in Vancouver, David has built strong relationships with friends, colleagues and clients. Everybody knows if they have a problem and need a solution, they should contact him, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with money. “I am always available to help or find help” is David’s favourite saying.

David specializes in investment, insurance and leveraging strategies for personal and corporate cases focusing on preventing financial shrinkage and encouraging growth. Through stop loss plans and low tax investments, he has helped many families meet their financial challenges, including those with disabled children. He has been in the financial field since January 2004.

-Received a B.Sc. in human physiology from McGill University and a B.A. with awards and honours in bio-psychology from UBC.
-Certified Senior Advisor, 2 year Order of Merit qualifier, currently working towards his certified financial planner designation.
-Worked in a variety of professions including heavy machinery operator, light commercial scuba diver, and business manager.
-Currently one of a handful of technical-diver instructors with PADI-DSAT and well respected life support equipment technician
-Director and newsletter editor with Barnet Rifle Club since 1995.
-President to his 530 unit, residential strata council, 3 years running.
-Guest business psychology speaker for UBC’s Social Psychology Department.
-Job Interview Process coach and Work Experience mentor with Fraser Heights Secondary School
-Guest lecturer for Financial Matters with Fraser Heights Secondary School
-Workshop presenter for the Disabilities Association of British Columbia
-Workshop presenter for the North Shore Connexions society
-Workshop presenter for Community Living BC North Shore division
-Entrepreneur mentor for Canadian Youth Business Foundation

Beauty Night Volunteers An Minh Vu and Debbie Wright Chat and Style!

Thank You Vancouver Foundation!
We are thrilled to announce we are one of the recipients of Vancouver Foundations’ 3 year grants. Over the next three years, Vancouver Foundation will be contributing $45 000 to our Life Makeover program. The investment in Beauty Night Society’s mission to provide marginalized women and youth tools to make positive lifestyle choices strengthens the community within a community that Beauty Night has created. This investment will make it easier for us to reach more women and to get more of their input.

How Are We Doing?
We will be creating a Women’s Advisory Group with our participants and volunteers who are interested in being involved. Through these sessions we are hoping to evaluate what we offer our participants, how we can evolve it to meet their needs in ways they would like their needs met, and creating a stronger sense of community.
An Minh Vu, one of long time volunteers will be conducting a survey for our Beauty Night participants. Our last survey was conducted in 2006 to establish demographics. Our updated survey will collect demographics as well as focus groups to find out what our participants want. We are aiming to conduct the survey in September 2010. Thanks to the Benefic Foundation to contributing $3000 to Beauty Night to conduct the suvey.

Every Woman & Womyns Gym Inspire Women who Move
Huge thanks to www.everywomanintheworld.com for raising over $2000 for Beauty Night through their annual silent auction & raffle. Every Woman Founders’ Kerri Carleson & Lynn Kanuka have made a huge impact on the lives of women through www.everywomanintheworld and continue to support Beauty Night monitarily, sponsorship and through volunary efforts. Kanuka, walk/run coach for Sport Med BC made it possible for 7 of our Womyns Gym participants to run the Sun Run. Thanks to the online coaching and the entry fees sponsored by the Sun, 4 of our participants completed the run. Womyn’s Gym Program Coordinator, Tyla Flexman & Kanuka might have a walk/run clinic geared up for Sept 2010 for our participants who wish to participate in the 2011 Sun Run.

Until then, Womyn’s Gym programming will focus on group fitness classes. We asked the women what types of fitness classes they would like to enjoy. Dance classes are at the top of the list. Thanks to Vivian Dang, Lina Martin-Chen, and Franny Varty, our participants are able to drop their children off with our child minders as they enjoy a dance class or our makeover program.

Out Reach
Since the closure of Vancouver Health’s Health Contact Centre in May, we have partnered with many community groups and service providers to offer our life makeover program to their participants. Participants of WISH, Atira’s EWMA (Emerging Women Making Art), YMCA’s Nanook, BC Women’s Hospital’s Fir Square, and Atira’s Serena’s Place have had or are scheduled to able to participate in our Life Makeover Program on their own premises. In July 2010, we stretch our programming to different parts of the lower mainland starting with the Front Room in Surrey.

Beauty Night Schedule Week of June 21 – June 27th.

Tonight’s Beauty Night
Schedule:
5:30 -8:30pm
412 E Cordova

Facilitating: Tiffany

Nails: Margo, Louise
Hair: Pamela & Courtney
Makeup: Amanda?
Skin Care: Anna
Reiki: Amanda

Creation Station: Jen

Tomorrow (Tuesday June 22) 6-8:30pm
BC Women’s Hospital
4500 Oak Street (in Fir Square * Please let us know if you need parking as they will give you a pass for parking)

Facilitating: Tiffany

Hair: Gary, Courtney
Nails: Karen, Louise
Skin Care: Anna
Makeup: Tiff

Saturday, June 26th
Nanook House
(special celebration for women wrapping up a 12 week personal development session I have been teaching. Mainly single moms)
Clark & Broadway Area * will coordinate place to meet with volunteers as confidentiality is important)
2- 4:30pm

Makeup:
Hair:
Nails:
Skin Care:
Massage:

* I’ve asked them to bring clothing to dress up in for after the make over, they can celebrate!
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Thank you to all of your support. If you wish to become a monthly contributor, please click on this link. https://beautynightsociety.pincgiving.com/
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Sincerely,

–
Caroline MacGillivray
Beauty Night Society
www.beautynight.org

Beauty Night provides marginalized women and youth tools to make positive life style changes.

9 years, 400 volunteers, 11 000 makeovers.

Beauty Night… because dignity is beautiful.

Filed Under: Newletter Tagged With: beauty night society, David Chen, downtown eastside, every woman in the world, Vancouver Foundation, volunteering, xmas stocking drive

Beauty Night Stocking Drive Video!

November 20, 2009 By Caroline 1 Comment

For those of you who are curious what a Beauty Night looks like, you can see it with your own eyes.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCxO5debFEQ[/video]

Over 200 women attended last year’s annual Christmas Stocking Drive.

Filed Under: Xmas Stocking Drive Tagged With: beauty night, Knitfit, makeover, Video, xmas stocking drive, YouTube

Wish List

November 2, 2009 By caroline Leave a Comment

In 9 years, the award-winning non-profit program has provided 10,000 makeovers to marginalized women and youth in Vancouver, Prince George, and Toronto. Beauty Night Society’s Monday makeover night on December 14th will include some North Pole notables—Mrs. Claus and her elves handing out Christmas stockings designed by Nancy Black. “This is the seventh year of our annual stocking drive,” says Caroline MacGillivray. “on December 14th, we will be handing out 600 Xmas stockings and 500 scarves in Toronto, Prince George and Vancouver.”

Typically, Beauty Night Society’s Monday makeover night at the PHS Life Skills Centre in Vancouver unites an impressive roster of Lower Mainland volunteers. Hairdressers, makeup artists, estheticians, massage therapists, plus many more volunteers join forces to offer services for the women.

Carrie Wheeler Talent Management, BC Hydro, and TD Canada Trust have been collecting donations of skin care, makeup, nail, dental, body, and hair care products to fill the stockings with. Other donations include gloves and toques. Beauty Night Knit Fit founder and program coordinator, Laura Mah have been offering knitting clinics to children in our communities. By knitting the community together, Beauty Night Knit Fit volunteers have knitted hundreds of scarves to hand out with the stockings.

Beauty Night Society Birthday party will also be making spirits bright for both volunteers and their makeover subjects with Christmas movies and other Xmas goodies. “This event is a tremendous community effort! Hundreds of volunteers have contributed thousands of hours to make this event special,”says MacGillivray, “Since the summer months, we have been cutting stockings and knitting scarves.”

The community has kicked in to help. Spearheaded by Beauty Night’s Stocking Coordinator, Blair Lockhart, designer, Nancy Black, Beauty Night Knit Fit’s Laura Mah and Product Coordinator, Revel Kunz, many more volunteers throughout the community have helped make this event a reality. Students at Chief Maquinna Elementary School, York House School, Churchill Secondary, Prince of Wales Secondary, Van Tech Secondary, Little Flower Academy, and many more helped sew the stockings and knit scarves. Canada Trust, Carrie Wheeler Talent Management, and BC Hydro have been collecting donations of skin care, makeup, nail, dental, body, and hair care products to fill the stockings with. Other donations include gloves and toques.

For more information about donating product, snacks or money, please contact Caroline MacGillivray at info@beautynight.org. Media welcome. Beauty Night’s 7th annual stocking drive will be collecting new hair, nail, skincare, dental care, gloves and socks before December 1st.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: BC Hydro, beauty night, beauty night society, Blair Lockhart, caroline macgillivray, Carrie Wheeler Talent Management, Christmas, community, Knit Fit, KVOS 12, laura mah, volunteer, xmas stocking drive

October 30, 2009 By caroline Leave a Comment

At Beauty Night, we have been thinking about Christmas since July! During the warm summer months, many a afternoon was spent in brain storm sessions with Laura Mah, Blair Lockhart, Nancy Black, Revel Kunz, Christie Gray and Tiffany Telford. The questions we kept asking were:

We have been doing the annual Xmas stocking drive for 8 years, what is working well?

What do we want to change?

How can we get more community members involved?

How do we get the message out?

How do we know if we meet the needs of the community?

What worked well was the dynamic community response to the Xmas Drive. Seniors, industry professionals, parents, children, youth and tweens wanted to contribute their time, energy, money and resources. Through word of mouth and positive media coverage this event has more volunteers wanting to get involved.

To increase word of mouth, Christie and I spent several afternoons with Knit Fit volunteers. Our training sessions included:

Social media training. How to use facebook, twitter and word press to share their stories of volunteering
Christie Gray created accounts for the volunteers who were interested in blogging. They have been contributing their stories on this blog about the Knit Fit and Stocking Drive.
Board member, Bill Nevison created a video of last year’s Xmas Stocking Drive celebration and posted it on You Tube. We encouraged the volunteers to use the video to show people what we do. People get 90% of their information from what they see and 10% from what they hear. Sometimes pictures work well – especially seeing the distribution of the stockings and scarves.
Public Speaking. I have heard that some people fear having to speak in front of people more than death. The volunteers prepared a speech about Knit Fit and Stocking Drive. Like monologues, we worked through the speeches. We worked on the key messaging, breath work, completing the thought and the writing. We work-shopped the speeches to make sure each speech felt like it sounded like the person who was delivering the speech.
Policy & Procedures. Together we discussed leadership techniques and guidelines for working with children and peers. We discussed how to create a safe and enjoyable space for volunteers to feel empowered and become actively engaged in the projects we are creating. Working together, we came up with some fantastic ideas and put them into motion.

What we are doing is working. Last weekend when Beauty Night Society volunteer, Denise Von Gorkum and I took several Beauty Night participants to the Models of Inspiration Filmathon, we ran into one of the parents of our Knit Fit volunteers. She thanked me for being a good role model for her daughters and their friends. She asked if we needed more volunteers for our Kids Club program. She offered to drive the girls who wished to volunteer to and from our location.

I am thrilled that people want to get more involved with the programming. This week we have been having meetings with volunteers and community members who want to offer other programs for our participants. Digital story telling, inner beauty boot camp, blogging, yoga classes and nutrition classes are some of the program options we are considering. While we continue to create opportunities for our participants, we keep the line of communication open with our participants and community partners. We want to make sure what we are offering is what the women want and that starts with asking for feed back.

Thanks to DJ Joe, our participant facilitator we have been able to ask for feed back from our participants. The general consensus is positive. Thanks to DJ’s constant queries, we are making some adjustments in our times and days for programming to make sure we are giving the women what they want.

The participants love the concept of joy and celebration. We have managed to include that in our regular programming. This past week’s programming included Beautilicious Halloween Celebration, Mom & Tot pumpkin carving sessions and pumpkin fitness classes. Through innovation and constant feedback, we continue to evolve our programming as we work together with our contributors, volunteers and participants.

As for our Xmas Activities, the women love the stockings and the Knit Fit scarves. What they would like to see is a way they can help with the planning. We have started inviting participants to our stocking cutting sessions. Although the participants have not attended these sessions, they seem to enjoy being asked.

Volunteers from York House School, Churchill Secondary, Kwatlan College – Fashion Design Program, Van Tech Secondary, Little Flower Academy, and individual sewers have stitched up stockings. Stocking Coordinator, Blair Lockhart has been collecting the sewn stockings and dropping them off to groups of children to decorate them. Sparks (5-7 year olds – before Brownies), Brownies and Girl Guides are getting together to decorate and in some cases fill the stockings.

Last year Revel Kunz opened up her home to the Rangers (one of groups of children who sewed and decorated stockings). The Rangers spent one Monday evening filling 130 stockings! By encouraging children and youth to get involved, I believe it helps them understand that we can impact someone’s life. When we work together, we can change the world.

I hope you enjoy the Halloween festivities. Stay tuned for our Xmas Wish List for our 8th Annual Xmas Stocking Drive.