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Champagne breakfast helps shelter save abuse victims

“I’m really proud to be a part of this organization and a recipient this year,” Lisa Barrett
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Carmen Sim enthusiastically checks out the silent auction items at the Chicks for Charity champagne breakfast fundraiser

The Chicks for Charity fourth annual champagne breakfast has proven once again that continual education on women’s  and community issues, plus the classy early morning mimosas are a winning mix when it comes to raising funds for those in need.

This year’s event saw money raised for the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter (CAWES), Wolf Creek Public Schools (WCPS) and the Ponoka Hospital and Care Centre.

Ponoka Secondary Campus parent council member Jackie Corkery announced to the women of the event that the school division’s portion of the funds would go toward the instillation of automatic AED defibrillators in several WCPS schools.

Each year more than 45,000 Canadians die of cardiac arrest and it is the leading cause of death in women, beating out even breast cancer. The early use of and AED can increase an individual’s survival rate by up to 75 per cent.

Lisa Barrett, the acute care manager at the hospital, took to the podium to thank the women of Chick for Charity for the new fetal monitor that is going to be purchased.

“I’m really proud to be a part of this organization and a recipient this year,” said Barrett.

Intake numbers of the hospital’s maternity ward have doubled in the last two years.

CAWES is Chicks for Charity’s primary recipient each year as the organization’s women and other women across central Alberta open their hearts and wallets to ensure the much needed resources saving women and children from domestic violence remain available.

In the last three years, Chicks for Charity has raised more than $38,000 funds for the shelter, which operates at full capacity 80 per cent of the time with its 40 beds.

With funds, operations manager Heather Pitt says the shelter hopes to expand. “We’re hoping on the next two to five years to have a second stage and low income housing.”

“This year alone, we’ve housed 82 women and 81 families and three of those families have come from Ponoka itself,” she added.

The event’s guest speaker was Chief Rick Hanson of the Calgary Police Service, who touched the crowd with his own knowledge and experiences when dealing with domestic violence on the job.

At his first call to attend a house under the siege of violence, Hanson and his partner entered the house, and he still recalls the smell of alcohol permeating the room. Three children were sitting in the room where the parents were fighting, watching television. As the police entered the children gave a wave and returned to watching their program.

“I looked at my partner, ‘what chance do these children have?’” said Hanson.

“The issue of toxic stress is huge,” he added. “If you don’t intervene early enough, society pays multiple times down the road.”

Abuse and professionally dealing with abuse is a complex matter for both those involved and the police. Hanson says too often when — especially husbands — are being arrested for violence after a first encounter with the law, wives plead not to have the abuser arrested.

“When husbands are arrested they aren’t at work on Monday, they lose their jobs and the bills don’t get paid,” Hanson explained.

In many cases abusers isolate their victims from families to the point where the usually outwardly charming man has complete control over the now dependent victim. “Ironically, to many families, to many friends . . . they don’t realize the courage it takes to do that (leave). Too often they’ll go, ‘you know honey every marriage has its rough spots. You get back in there.’”

“What you’re doing here today in raising money for Heather and the women’s shelter is so vital,” he added.