Grateful for You: What You Made Possible in 2025
Thank you for walking alongside us
As we come to the close of 2025, we want to pause — not to rush toward what’s next, but to reflect with care on what this year has asked of us, and what it has made possible together.
This has been a year of transition, learning, and renewal at Cowichan Women Against Violence Society (CWAVS). Amid growing need, our community showed up with courage and compassion. Because of you, women, children, and families navigating violence, housing insecurity, and trauma were met with steadiness, dignity, and genuine care — often at moments when it mattered most.
This past year invited us to move with intention —to slow down, listen, and respond to what our community was asking. We are profoundly grateful to everyone who walked alongside CWAVS during a year of transition, growth, and renewal. Because of your care and commitment, we were able to show up with steadiness, humility, and heart.
Together:
We supported more than 6,000+ community members across CWAVS programs — meeting people navigating violence, housing insecurity, and trauma with respect, compassion, and an unwavering belief in their strength.
We opened Kw’i Lelum (“Rise House”) Second Stage Housing, welcoming 50+ women and children into safe, stable homes. Many families have shared that they are beginning to feel calm again — a reminder of how essential safety, community, and belonging are to healing.
At Cedar Branches Women’s Shelter, staff continued to show up through complexity, health challenges, and loss — consistently sheltering 20+ women, sharing 2,520 meals, and offering over 5,000 drop-in services in a low-barrier, relationship-centred environment grounded in dignity and care.
Through prevention, counselling, and accountability-focused programs, we worked toward safer futures — reaching over 500+ students, supporting 800+ people through victim services, and walking alongside 20+ men who completed violence-prevention programming, contributing to meaningful and lasting change.
This work is not simple or linear. It is carried through relationship, trust, and the shared understanding that safety and healing are collective responsibilities. We are deeply grateful to be doing this work with YOU!
As we look ahead, the need for this work has not slowed — but neither has our commitment to meeting it with care, cultural safety, and intention.
Year-end gifts help ensure CWAVS can continue to hold space for women, children, and families navigating violence, housing insecurity, and transition. Your support sustains shelter, counselling, advocacy, prevention, and the relationships that make healing possible.
If you are in a position to give, we warmly invite you to make a year-end donation.
Thank you for taking the time to be with us in this moment of reflection.
We are deeply grateful to everyone who has walked alongside CWAVS this year — through transition, growth, and the steady, often unseen work of care. As we move into the year ahead, we do so with intention and hope — grounded in community, guided by relationship, and committed to creating spaces where safety, connection, and healing are possible.
With gratitude,
Lisa Scott
Executive Director