Duane Hicks
With your generosity, you can help make a family’s house their home.
The Rainy River District Women’s Shelter of Hope is helping to ensure that women and children in Fort Frances and the surrounding area have a home that’s equipped with basic furnishings.
Under its new “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 items, like cutlery and bedding–essentially anything else that will help make a home more comfortable.
While the shelter has accepted donations in the past, the furnishings had to be transported to, and stored in, Atikokan.
So it came up with the idea to rent a storage locker in Fort Frances, and now donations can be dropped off and picked up here.
This will make it easier for local women who need the furnishings to access them.
“Because of the shelter serving the Rainy River District, we would get people calling for donations and then we would have to make arrangements for them to come to Atikokan,” explained Sabrina DeGagne, home supervisor for the Shelter of Hope.
“But many of our women are from Fort or relocating to Fort Frances, and there was nothing there for them when they left the shelter to start up in their own homes.
“Some of the places aren’t furnished,” she noted. “Lots of times, if they are renting on their own, they have nothing except their clothes, especially with children.”
As such, the Shelter of Hope came up with the idea to rent a storage locker in Fort Frances to store household items that people have donated to help women and children make their new house a home.
Having the storage locker here also will make it much easier for local people to donate items.
Up until now, DeGagne said the shelter sometimes would have to turn away donations because it was difficult for staff to come here, pick up items, and then transport them back to Atikokan.
“We actually only have an agency van, so myself or one of our other workers would have to take our own truck,” she noted, adding road conditions also could be a deterrent.
On top of that, those people who want to donate items often want to get rid of them in a timely manner–and not have to wait until the shelter is able to come all the way from Atikokan to get them.
“We thought, ‘Why not create this program?'” said DeGagne.
“Hopefully, we can make it work and let it grow,” she added. “It’s pretty much self-sufficient.”
DeGagne said people often decide to donate furnishings when they’re doing spring cleaning, relocating to a smaller home or apartment, their kids go off to post-secondary education, or relatives are deciding what to do with the estate of a deceased loved one.
“People are very generous,” she noted, adding, at times, there’s an influx of donations that allows the shelter to pretty much fully furnish a home.
“Anyone can donate,” DeGagne stressed. “And we send out thank-yous because we’re always appreciative of anything that comes in.”
Arrangements can be made to drop off donations in Fort Frances by calling outreach worker Laura Bailey at 271-4171 or the Shelter of Hope at 1-800-465-3348.
