The Eagle’s Nest Stoney Family Shelter, located in Morley, is gearing up for their annual Adopt-A-Family Christmas campaign.
Based on previous years of support from the Cochrane community, shelter manager Nora-Lee Rear is hoping locals will once again show their support for the family shelter, which helped 164 families in 2012.
Rear said it’s up to sponsors how much they would like to spend on Christmas hampers for their adopted families, but a good rule of thumb is to not spend so much that the family couldn’t duplicate that same Christmas hamper on their own the following year.
This time of the year also calls on the need for general donations, both items and cash, for the shelter – including clean clothing, bedding and toiletries.
“We can also always use volunteers in our play room and donations room for sorting,” said Rear, adding that the federally funded facility has not seen an increase in six years.
Rear said Cochrane and area groups and businesses such as local churches, the Activettes Food Bank, Home Treasures and the Soul Studio have been very supportive in previous years.
As November is Family Violence Prevention Month, the Eagle’s Nest Family Shelter will be hosting weekly awareness sessions on Friday afternoons at the Bearspaw Youth Centre for the remainder of the month.
Previous years have seen the shelter host a walk, but Rear said it was time to change things up.
“We’ve been concentrating on healing, as Christmas is a hard time of the year for many of our families,” explained, Rear, adding that local elders will be taking part in these awareness sessions to facilitate traditional Stoney healing practices.
The shelter will also be hosting a pilot project, the Stoney Parenting Program, in the coming months, beginning with a stage of information gathering.
“We’ve had lots of parenting programs that we have brought in from the outside, but not one built around Stoney culture before,” said Rear. “We’re really excited about this.”
Rear said Stoney elders would play a key role in this program.
The shelter has been in operation since 1992. After several years of much-needed renovations on the to-do list, the shelter is awaiting finalizations from their application with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for monies to tend to some facility facelift requirements.
The shelter currently has 20 beds for women and children in need.
To donate or learn more, email [email protected] or call 403-881-2816.
