“This facility represents a significant milestone in our mission to uplift and support women and families.”
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The doors at YWCA Regina’s new women’s centre have officially opened after more than six years of planning and construction.
kikaskihtânaw Centre for Women and Families is a first-of-its-kind community hub in the Cathedral neighbourhood. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday to celebrate the organization’s new home.
“This facility represents a significant milestone in our mission to uplift and support women and families,” said YWCA Regina CEO Melissa Coomber-Bendtsen in a news release.
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“The Centre’s comprehensive services will provide a safe haven and essential resources for those in need, fostering healing, hope, and independence.”
Coomber-Bendtsen was joined at the grand opening by board chair Chelsey Berrecloth, key members of the project’s capital campaign, several large donors, community partners like REACH and All Nations Hope Network, and provincial and city dignitaries.
The new facility’s approach is to provide trauma-informed wraparound supports under one roof, with the intention of preventing families from falling into crisis and to deinstitutionalize the ways that such services are delivered.
The average cost to support a woman in crisis within a reactive model of care is around $100,000, while the supportive housing method being used in the centre reduces that figure to $14,000, the YWCA has said.
Saskatchewan has the highest rates of domestic violence in the country at double the national average, with 90 per cent of victims being women and children. YWCA Regina estimates that, over the last five years, more than 4,000 women in need were turned away from its shelters due to a lack of space.
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kikaskihtânaw will replace the YWCA Regina headquarters currently located downtown and will continue providing shelter spaces for women as well as outreach services from both the YWCA and other partners, like Mobile Crisis Services.
Inside the expansive building’s footprint are 41 emergency shelter beds, 72 transitional housing units, social spaces including a community kitchen, a youth hub with a medical practitioner and counsellors, a coffee shop, clothing store and a 180-space child-care centre.
Also on site is an Indigenous Healing Lodge stewarded by All Nations Hope Network, which offers a sweat lodge, ceremony space and a place for preparing medicines.
Plans for the centre started in 2017, with construction beginning in 2023. A capital campaign supported the project with a goal of $70 million, including $35.5 million from the federal government, $4.3 million from the provincial government and $3 million from the City of Regina.
An additional $1.75 million is still needed to finish off the campaign’s efforts.
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