Dress for Success Vancouver seeks donations as inequality pushes demand

While other non-profits were forced to shut down because of the pandemic, a Vancouver charity that helps women find jobs thrived “with a lot of help and a level of resiliency that we hadn’t ever expected to have to dig down to or reach.”

Dress For Success Vancouver has empowered 1,700 women since the pandemic started, but it wasn’t easy. Executive director, Amy Robichaud, explains it was a struggle to stay open under COVID-19, and the pandemic made it clear just how much people rely on their support.

“The day after we went into our first lockdown … our phones started ringing, our clients were calling … for help to access services or to know what was going on or to find out the right information,” she said. “It became really obvious that we held a lot of trust in the community and that we had no choice but to really make sure that we were there as a trusted voice that had clear, calm, correct information to share with our clients and with our community and that we will be able to find a way to continue serving them.”

Dress For Success was able to keep its doors open virtually and in person when it was allowed to do so.

Robichaud says wage subsidies made a difference for the staff and allowed the organization to keep other women on track to find the work that was available and to help them find services.

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On Wednesday, Dress For Success Vancouver kicked off a fundraising push with its first in-person event since 2019.

“Our theme this year is uplift,” Robichaud said. “And that is what our plan is to do is to really uplift those folks who’ve been working so hard for the last 20 months, but also uplift our clients … and just uplift everyone’s spirits by being able to bring the community back together in a meaningful, inspiring, and hopefully, really fun, and memorable afternoon.”

Women’s jobs disproportionately impacted by pandemic

According to a Statistics Canada report in May, job losses because of the COVID-19 pandemic have been consistently more severe for women than for men.

The report says from March 2020 to February 2021, women accounted for 53.7 per cent of year-over-year employment losses.

The analysis points to a high proportion of women working at small firms in service industries, which it says have been hurt particularly hard during the pandemic.

According to a report from Royal Bank in late 2020, men are picking up jobs at three times the rate women are leaving the workforce during the pandemic.

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• Women with higher high school grades given same leadership opportunities as men who flunked: UBC study

• Women’s participation in labour force reaches lowest level in three decades: RBC

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While the pandemic plays a role in the women leaving the workforce, demands of raising children are also likely to blame, according to the study.

The impact women have faced through the pandemic has proven how vital organization like Dress for Success is to get women back into the workforce, Robichaud says.

“Even before March of 2020, women were in a precarious situation in the workforce … The work we do in helping women find good work, good jobs, jobs that match their tasks and talents, that they are fully employed at their highest capabilities has never been more important, not only for the individual clients that we help find the jobs for but for all of us,” Robichaud told CityNews. “The economic recovery that is necessary for our province and our country to undergo is absolutely critical. And we can’t do that if half of the workforce is left behind.”

“Canada was not as perfect as it seemed…” Vivian Liu, 2021 Inspiration Award Winner shares about the racism she experienced when she arrived in Canada and how the community and support of Dress for Success have helped her flourish! #SuccessLuncheon pic.twitter.com/5vmzqMQ1QS

— dfsvancouver (@DFSVancouver) November 3, 2021

If you would like to donate, you can visit helpingwomennow.ca.

Dress for Success is also looking for volunteers. They usually operate with the help of 300 volunteers, but that number has shrunk to about 40. To volunteer your time and skills you can fill out a form on the Dress for Success website as well.