Community Profile – Women in Need Cooperative

By Victoria Pride Contributing Writer

Women in Need (WIN) is a local cooperative that provides support for women in crisis.

“Our mission is to support women along their journey between crisis and wellness, and I would add that our programs are really designed to meet women where they are,” says Jasmine Philip, Marketing and Communications Coordinator for WIN. “All of the programs have been based on the idea of self-sufficiency and the idea that women need to be able to freely choose what they want and say what they need.”

WIN offers a variety of programs designed to work with women through crisis. This includes connecting with supports, helping develop both personal and professional skills and providing physical necessities such as furniture, household items, children’s toys and clothing.

“When you try to leave a situation with domestic violence or an abusive relationship, often you have nothing,” says Philip. “You can’t take anything with you. You have nothing for yourself. You might have nothing for your children. So, it’s one thing to get out of that, but it’s a whole other thing to be able to live and start a life and create a safe place for yourself.”

Trans and Queer Inclusive Shops
Next year will mark WIN’s 30-year anniversary. They run five resale shops throughout the Greater Victoria area that help support their programs and a lot of effort has been put into expanding the availability of its resources to all women who need them. Philip explains that WIN recognizes the fluidity of gender and that, to them, it is self-identified.

“We’ve really looked at whether our stores are welcoming to the trans community as well as the greater queer community. We put out a survey to our community to find out how they felt shopping in our stores. Did people feel safe and what changes could we make? We now list our clothing as masculine and feminine and stopped having men and women’s sections. We tried to have more things in the store, larger size women’s shoes, different things.”

They also have done events called Shop Proud where queer people who might feel uncomfortable shopping during regular hours could come in for a more private shopping hour.

Adapting to COVID
Retaining the quality and availability of their programs has been paramount throughout the pandemic, according to Philip. It’s been a hard time for all businesses and WIN has taken its share of hits. They had to close the doors of their stores for three months while they adjusted.

“We wanted to make sure anyone who was working felt really safe. And we had to put a lot of safety protocols in our store. That meant changing spacing, figuring out the current research on how the COVID is transferred and making sure we had heightened safety standards and planning protocols.”

Donations are now made by appointment, the availability of which has been expanded as the crisis continues. All donated items must be quarantined for five days before they are made available.

Despite revenue being down Philip says they still have a lot of really great community support and their dedicated staff have been amazing.

“I encourage anyone who’s at all interested in volunteering to please get in touch with us, we have a lot of side projects that people can even do from their homes.”

In exciting news, WIN has created an online shop where people can browse and purchase merchandise. New clothes, home accessories, books and more are added frequently.

During these hard times, a little help can go a long way. If you have an opportunity to volunteer with, donate to, or shop at WIN, it is definitely a worthy cause.

Thanks Jasmine and the WIN team for taking the time to talk to us!
Win Website
Win online store

 

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