Shelter / How your donations make a difference
How your donations make a difference
Did you know?
- The Royal LePage® Shelter Foundation™ has raised over $46 million to-date and currently supports 200 local women’s shelters and national partners
- Since its founding in 1998, the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation has proudly grown to become the largest public foundation in Canada dedicated exclusively to funding women’s shelters and domestic violence prevention.
- Royal LePage is the only Canadian real estate company with its own charitable foundation.
- 100% of funds raised and donated locally, stay local. Royal LePage Canada proudly pays the administrative expenses of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation.
How do women’s shelters use our donations?
When women and children arrive at their local shelter, they’re provided with much more than a bed. The shelters we fund offer an incredible suite of supports and programs that help women heal from their traumas, regain their confidence, and build lives that are filled with hope instead of fear. These services can include:
- Safe & secure emergency shelter
- Crisis intervention & safety plans
- Food, toiletries, clothing & transportation
- Employment and job training
- Safe pet programs
- Therapy & counselling
- Social & self care activities
- Life skills workshops
- Child and youth centred care
- Legal assistance
- Housing assistance
- Sense of community & friendship
- Parenting programs
- Community supports after leaving the shelter
The value of the undesignated dollars received from the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation cannot be overstated. Local women’s shelters are able to address their highest priority needs at any given time, with no strings attached. This allows shelter staff to focus on doing what they do best – which is keeping women and children safe from harm.
How can we stop the violence before it starts?
While emergency women’s shelters are often a lifesaving resource for women and children escaping intimate partner violence, preventing abuse before it starts has long been a focus of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation. In addition to granting millions of dollars to shelters and transition houses in communities across Canada, the Shelter Foundation also prioritizes funding to organizations that are helping to stop domestic violence before it starts.
Teen Healthy Relationships
Each year, a grant is made by the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation to the Canadian Women’s Foundation to fund programs in communities from coast-to-coast that teach youth 10-19 of all genders how to create safe and healthy relationships and avoid violence in their lives.
Benefits of these programs cannot be overstated. A recent evaluation of Teen Healthy Relationship programs1 outlined that youth who participated in the programming where able to:
- Recognize gender stereotypes and how they harm us all
- Recognize red flags for dating violence and abuse
- Recognize and assert healthy boundaries
- Learn what healthy relationships look and feel like
- Learn about consent, respect and equality
- Learn how to name and express complicated feelings
- Build a toolbox of healthy relationship skills (communication, conflict resolution and problem-solving)
- Build self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-confidence
- Build connection to school, social and cultural communities
Moosehide Campaign
5,250,732 and counting. That’s the number of pins that have been gifted by the Moose Hide Campaign to spark important conversations about gender-based violence in Canada. Pinning this small square of moose hide or animal-free fabric on your lapel signifies a commitment to honouring, respecting and protecting the women and children in your life and working together to end violence against women and children and all those along the gender continuum.
The Moose Hide Campaign was founded as an Indigenous-led grassroots movement of men and boys in response to the tragic reality that there are over 1,200 missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada.
Standing in solidarity with our country’s need to address truth, reconciliation and gender-based violence, the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation has proudly donated to the Moose Hide Campaign in support of moose hide pin production and distribution, as well as workshops that take K-12 students and teachers on a learning journey towards a more just society for women and children.
To join the Moose Hide Campaign movement, please visit www.moosehidecampaign.ca
We’re also proud to support:
Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children
Neighbours, Friends & Families (NFF) was launched in 2005 as a public education campaign in support of recommendations by the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee. More often than not we hear from people that they do not know what to do when they see someone experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) or they did not know that their neighbour, friend or family member is a victim/survivor of IPV. With the aim to prevent IPV, this campaign has been created to provide information about the risks and signs of IPV, how you can safely intervene and actions you can take to address it.
With the support of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children at Western University will deliver workshops for shelter workers to introduce them to the resources of the NFF campaign for use in their outreach work and public education.
SOAR (Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury through Research)
SOAR is a non-profit initiative based in Kelowna, BC working to investigate the intersection of Brain Injury (BI) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), educate members of the public and those who work with survivors, and empower survivors to get the supports and services they need.
With the support of the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, SOAR is expanding the use and effectiveness of their Concussion Awareness Training Tool among women’s support workers via train-the-trainer workshops.
Women’s Shelters Canada
The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation is proud to be a national founding partner of sheltersafe.ca, an online, clickable map that provides the 24/7 contact information for women’s shelters from coast to coast. If you or someone you know is experiencing violence or abuse, help is just a click away. Sheltersafe.ca is an initiative of Women’s Shelters Canada.
For a list of provincial and territorial helplines, visit sheltersafe.ca/find-help/