Shoppers Love. You Growing Women’s Health Campaign Makes Big Impact Locally.

If you’ve been following the blog for a while you know that last year I participated in the annual Shoppers Love. You campaign. It was truly an amazing experience, and I’m obsessed with the incredible initiatives this brand is making to help women. Read previous post here.

What’s truly amazing about the annual campaign is that it benefits more than 500 local women’s health organizations across Canada.

And it’s that time of year again! Shoppers Drug Mart recently kicked off its 16th annual SHOPPERS LOVE. YOU. Growing Women’s Health campaign.

About the campaign

During the four-week campaign, local Shoppers Drug Mart locations will accept donations from customers with a goal to raise $3.6 million to help fund local women’s health charities.

Shoppers Drug Mart locations across the country will partner with a charity in their local community to provide direct funding, resources and programming to meet the health needs of women. Associate-owners in each store select a local women’s health organization to benefit from the funds donated by customers and employees, with 100% of customer donations remaining in the community. Over the last year the program has supported more than 500 unique local women’s health charities in cities and towns across Canada.

“The response to the Growing Women’s Health campaign is always so positive because donors know the funds raised stay in their own community to provide direct support to local women’s health organizations,” said Lisa Gibbs, Director, Community Investment, Shoppers Drug Mart. “Over the past 15 years, we’ve donated close to $32.3M million, thanks to the generosity of our patients, customers and employees.”

This year, the fundraising for the Growing Women’s Health campaign kicked off early with a Beauty Gala on August 12. For $10, customers were treated to a makeover and skin consultation. Customers could redeem $5 from each ticket toward any cosmetic purchase made during the event while the remaining $5, plus 100% of all incremental donations, went to a community-based women’s health program. In total more than $510, 000 was raised to support local women’s health charities.

To make a donation in store customers can purchase and personalize a “Growing Women’s Health” icon; a “leaf” for a loonie, a “butterfly” for $5, an “apple” for $10 and a “bird” for $50. The icons are prominently displayed on the Growing Women’s Health Tree in all participating stores.

About SHOPPERS LOVE. YOU.

SHOPPERS LOVE. YOU. is the identity for our long-standing commitment for women’s health. To help women live their best lives, the SHOPPERS LOVE. YOU. program is designed to help women stay focused on making their own health a priority by connecting them to the expertise of our partners at leading women’s health organizations and to others in support of women’s health initiatives across Canada. Learn more at shoppersloveyou.ca

Here in Atlantic Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart has chosen to support Harvest House Canada , and I had the opportunity to chat with a representative from Harvest House Atlantic charity directly to learn more about this partnership. Bless her for taking time our of her busy schedule to answer my questions. Below we chat a bit more about the organization, and how it’s impacted by the Shoppers. Love You Growing Women’s Health campaign.

Can you tell me about your organization?? And how it got started?

Cal Maskery is the Executive Director and Founder of Harvest House. He began this outreach in the Moncton Community in June of 1997.

His vision was to provide a welcoming and friendly community of faith and support. He wanted to provide opportunities for believers and people of goodwill to come and work together to help people in need to get back on their feet.

He saw needy, lonely people coming for help. Some needed food, and shelter while others just needed someone to listen to their troubles and feel loved and cared for.

Cal offered an overnight emergency shelter and later a 9 month live-in addiction recovery program. As Cal saw people who loved giving back to others, he recognized the truth of the mission statement, “Connecting People of Compassion with People in Need.”  

What’s the biggest stigma surrounding addiction, and homelessness?

There are many stigmas around homelessness and addiction. I think the one that stands out the most is: “They choose to be addicted and/or homeless” .

I think that the best way to remove this stigma is to recognize that homelessness and addiction can strike anyone at anytime for many different reasons.

The people we reach come from various backgrounds, education levels, age groups and more. For this reason, there needs to be several approaches to solve this problem. Not one solution will work for everyone.

What do you feel you’re able to provide for people above all else?

We offer many life changing services and programs to our guests and residents; Emergency Shelter, Addiction Recovery, Step-up Housing, Skills and Trades Development, life-skills classes, GED, daily meals for the community and more.

Above all else, we provide opportunities for people of compassion to connect with people in need to make a difference.

Without a dedicated team of volunteers and dedicated donors we would not be able to serve our community.

What is it that you need the most to keep your organization going?

We rely on financial and non-monetary donations from our community. Equally important is volunteerism.

We need thousands of hours of volunteerism to maintain a community of support for our guests and residents.

Tasks vary and include: serving coffee, teaching a life-skills class, sorting clothing in our free clothing room, skilled labor to help us maintain and make repairs to our buildings, business support services, fundraising support for events, and so much more!

How does the partnership and funding from the Shoppers. Love You campaign impact your organization?

In addition to the generous financial contribution, the “Shoppers. Love you Campaign” helps us gain more visibility in our community. This has the potential to increase our donor base, gain volunteers, and non-monetary donations.

It also educates our community about the services we provide which can potentially open up an opportunity to help someone in the community that might be suffering.  

What’s one thing you wish people knew about what you do?

We currently serve women through our Emergency Shelter, community center programs and life-skills classes, and the Step-up Housing Program. We will be launching our first Women’s 9 month residential Addiction Recovery Program in 2017. We will start with an 8 bed facility located in Moncton, NB.

If you would like to donate or volunteer please contact us at 506-855-0626.  

How can we help?

You can help by helping us expand our reach. We would love to share our story and promote our Facebook page. Facebook has become our most popular online strategy to keep our community informed on what we are doing, our needs, and good news stories.

https://www.facebook.com/TheHarvestHouseatlantic/

We also have a donation page with canadahelps.org

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/harvest-house-moncton/

Currently Harvest House is fundraising for their Annual Thanksgiving dinner and just 2.79 can help them serve a hot meal to someone in need! That’s hardly the cup of coffee.