Duane Hicks
An appeal last month for donations to the Rainy River District Women’s Shelter of Hope’s “From Our Home To Yours” program has been answered.
Now the shelter is seeking out local woman in need who might require the items.
“We’ve had a phenomenal response,” outreach worker Laura Bailey told the Times.
“The community’s been great, the whole district,” she enthused.
“Our storage locker is getting quite full, from dressers to night stands to TV stands, curtains, pots, pans, dishes–you name it
“We don’t have any washers or dryers or larger appliances yet, but that could change with one phone call, of course,” Bailey added.
Now that she has a storage locker full of donated items, Bailey said it’s time to start focusing on getting those items to local women and children who need household furnishings, especially after relocating.
Arrangements can be made to pick up items in Fort Frances by calling Bailey at 271-4171 or the Shelter of Hope at 1-800-465-3348.
“Our basic procedure is they would call and get a hold of me, and we could arrange a time to meet at the storage locker,” Bailey explained.
“We would go through the storage locker and pick out whatever their house was in need of.
“They would be meeting me,” she stressed.
“That way, they would be taking what they need instead of me guessing what they need.”
While the shelter has had a storage locker in Atikokan for some time, it found that some women and children at the shelter were relocating to this end of the district.
As a result, they didn’t have a way to get the items from Atikokan to here.
So the shelter came up with the idea to rent a storage locker in Fort Frances, and now donations can be dropped off and picked up here.
Under the “From Our Home To Yours” program, the shelter is accepting donations of household furniture, beds, washers, dryers, and appliances–as long as they’re in good working order.
Items also can include smaller things, like cutlery, curtains, and bedding–essentially anything else that will help make a home more comfortable.
