By Khushi Sharma
On Tuesday, Oct. 22 the “Girls Can Talk Club” at SOSS had their first fundraiser of the year and found it to be a massive success.
The Girls Can Talk Club started as part of one of the many school branches of the Vancouver organization, the Girls Can Talk Society. I found out about it through social media and wanted totry to bring it to life in our own school.
The club’s aim is to create an open discussion for issues regarding women, and fundraise for women in our local community. To do this, we started off by researching the different types of charities in our community that are focused on aiding women.
We found out about the South Okanagan Women In Need Society, based in Penticton. In 2018 the shelter helped more than 5000 women and 3000 children who were stuck in abusive homes or relationships. They offer safe homes, youth beds and counselling programs for women and children free of cost.
The executive director of SOWINS (Debbie Scarborough) met with our club prior to our bake sale and taught us more about the different kinds of abuse and how we can play a part in helping the survivors of abusive relationships.
On Tuesday we set up our table and information board in the school foyer during parent-teacher interviews. We were able to inform people about the shelter and its services, and also how our club plans on helping. We raised $362.65 for SOWINS (surpassing the initial goal of $150) through selling goods baked by our club members, and successfully shared our knowledge surrounding sexual abuse and domestic violence with a large part of the community.
The bake sale proved to be a great start for the Girls Can Talk Club. Our hope is that we can continue learning and sharing our knowledge of issues regarding women, and make a positive impact in our school and community.
(Khushi Sharma is a student at Southern Okanagan Secondary School.)
