Your generosity changes everything.
In 2024 expect to see some bold steps into new initiatives in training, legal and systemic advocacy, employment for survivors, and second stage transition housing.
Our Journey Continues
The past three years have hurt as we stretched to meet the challenges in front of us at redline effort and our organization bent from the pressure of what it means to do anti-violence work through the effects of a global pandemic. Things became remarkably more challenging as we experienced the impact of the clawing back of the gender and racial equity gains our communities had worked so hard for leading up to 2019.
The struggle was made easier because of you and all our communities across Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and internationally. We are honoured by all the relationships that teach us, sustain us, and inspire us. Our fabulous volunteers – 140 strong, our fierce staff team and enormously dedicated leadership team, our brilliant board members, our dynamic donors, our government partners, First Nations, Urban Indigenous partners, our community collaborators, our accomplices, and the over 45,000 people who reached out seeking information, support, healing, advocacy, and safety.
The urgency of this moment propels us forward as we reaffirm the vision, mission, and values that have lasted the test of time, specifically how the founding women at BWSS recognized that gender-based violence does not take place only between two individuals in isolation. Rather, violence occurs in a social context and a worldview that systemically reinforces the power of some people to oppress others.
So, we stay on the frontline, meeting survivors where they are. Reading through our Impact Report, you will likely have noted how BWSS is perfecting a deep intersectional feminist, trauma, and violence-informed response. More than throwaway lines, this is our life, and it’s shaped by 44 years of applying the lessons and teachings derived directly from the women, girls, and gender-diverse people we exist to serve. In 2024, expect to see some bold steps into new initiatives in training, legal and systemic advocacy, employment for survivors, and second-stage transition housing.
Thank you dearly and deeply for staying with us on this journey. We are eager to continue linking arms toward a world free of domestic, intimate partner, and sexualized violence.
Angela Marie MacDougall
Executive Director
