CALGARY- A busy shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence is back open—but faces a major funding shortfall.
The downtown YWCA had to be evacuated during the June flood. 100 beds have since been reopened, along with 42 at their emergency shelter in Inglewood.
However, the basement which houses a full gym suffered major damage, meaning a huge revenue source has been lost.
“The challenge now is moving forward and going from crisis mode into getting the families back where they need to be, and assessing the damage done during the flood,” explains CEO Sue Tomney. “The majority provided a wide variety of resources to the YWCA in terms of money, frankly.”
She adds the organizations is trying to determine how to move forward.
“It’s really trying to do some number crunching on ‘what are we going to do, what makes sense for the organization, where do we put our energy into bringing things back’…and if we don’t, where are we going to make up that revenue from.”
The YWCA is currently appealing for cash donations, to ensure their programming continues.
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