Celebrating Women's Day
On Friday, March 8th, men and women around the world celebrated International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the economic, social and cultural achievements of the women in their communities. It is a day to celebrate all women who nurture. Sr. Charlene Kostuk SSJ, PA-C, MSHS who spearheaded the project, was inspired by women around the world to make a difference in our community. She organized a drive to collect women’s clothing in order to create care packages and also connected with other women in the community to contribute. Two months of donations later the day had arrived and St. John’s would celebrate by providing a day of comfort for all the women who came on Friday, May 8th.
It was an overcast day with rain threatening the whole time. With a slight chill in the air we knew it’d be wise to also provide coffee for the women. With the coffee brewing and everything else getting assembled, we were still on track to have a great day! Thanks to everyone’s hard work, it looked really nice! We were just getting started though and still had a bit of work to do before we could open up.
The larger tent was the area where the women could come grab coffee and get their gift bags. At the smaller tent we had volunteers giving manicures. We were so happy that a few of our amazing volunteers offered to do nails for the women! They had a wonderful variety of colors and the women really took advantage of that. With our nail station set up, and all of our bags ready to go we were really ready to open up.
Our guests were extremely thrilled to receive the care packages and excited at the prospect of getting their nails done. The volunteers did an amazing job! Needless to say, we had some extremely satisfied customers. As the day wore on the rain started to fall, but our amazing volunteers didn’t pack up until everyone was finished. Thank you again!
When the dust had settled we had given out 63 "Celebrating Women’s Day " bags. Each bag contained two bras and two pairs of undergarments. The gift bags contained toiletries, cosmetics and wallets. Thank you to all of our dedicated volunteers for their hard work! And special thanks to Sr. Charlene for organizing such a wonderful event!