The Intact Insurance team with their pile of wrapped gifts for adults and children living at NYWS

The holiday season can be a challenging time in shelter. For families who have already faced such challenges in surviving and escaping gender-based violence, many spend the holiday season wishing things could have been different than needing to spend this special time of year in shelter. So, we at North York Women’s Shelter try to make the season as bright as possible for all families who walk through our doors – no matter what they celebrate. We have been lucky to have received many beautiful donations to use as holiday gifts, not only for the women staying at NYWS, but also their children and pets.

The Intact Insurance team hard at work wrapping holiday gifts for our shelter clients.

This December, we were honoured to welcome a corporate volunteering group from Intact Insurance; a group with a personal connection to our shelter, and many allies of our cause to end gender-based violence. The team of nine came to our shelter on Thursday, December 4th, bringing festive energy and problem-solving skills with them! Their volunteering afternoon was spent matching a set of donated toys to each child currently living in our shelter, and making sure they were wrapped with love and care.

These presents were added to throughout the month, with notable gifting donations also coming in from Armour Heights Presbyterian Church, Beauty by Banda, the Fill a Purse for a Sister Campaign, L3Harris WESCAM, Old Navy Vaughan Mills, Peppertree Klassics, Royal LePage Terrequity Children’s Foundation, St Jerome High School, Together We Stand Foundation, Torolug, Toys for Tots, VEGA Instruments, and many other generous individuals in our community. These wonderful toys, games, beauty products and accessories helped us to prepare beautiful gift bundles for each of our client families, both currently in our shelter program and for our recently departed transitional clients.

Our warmest thanks to all of our ally organizations who have worked together to make this December very special for all families supported by North York Women’s Shelter. Your generosity was felt by all of our residents and helped to bring a lot of smiles to their faces this holiday season.

On behalf of all of us at NYWS, we wish everyone a safe, peaceful and joyful holidays and a happy new year!