Carloads of gifts help start off a new year and a new life for local family

As classes for the semester begin, the holidays behind us and a shiny new year ahead, Tracy Beauregard is looking forward to posting a new letter from a grateful family on the bulletin board in the EVDS lunchroom. Over the last few months, Beauregard, the faculty’s operations manager, was one of dozens of faculty, staff and students who helped raise money and gifts for a local family fleeing domestic violence.

Every year for about a dozen years Beauregard has rallied colleagues around the university to support Sonshine Centre, an agency that works with victims of family violence. “We don’t just raise money,” she says. “We get a full list of gifts or items needed, from a broom and a dustpan to a kid wanting a colouring book. It’s just a wide variety of everything and anything.”

The items go to a family, this year it’s a mom with two kids, who have left their home to start a new life without violence. “They literally have nothing,” says Beauregard. “The kids walked out the door thinking they were going to school so they have taken nothing. They just have their back pack and their coats for the day. They never see their belongings again.”

The family moves into one of the 24 residential units at Sonshine where they can stay for up to a year, before eventually moving into their own home. This past December, Beauregard delivered a couple of carloads of items to help the family transition into their new life.  “In January, I make sure that the family has received everything and that they were happy with it,” she says. “I follow up because I like to know how they are.”

And it’s usually about now that Beauregard’s favourite correspondence of the year arrives in the mail. “I get a card from the family which I share with everybody who contributed,” she says. “I make sure everybody knows the impact it made.” Every January, Beauregard takes down the letter from the last family and puts it in a folder along with the thank you notes from previous families. And then she posts the letter from the latest family she’s helped start anew.

“We never take the notes down in the faculty. There’s a thank you letter, pictures or whatever always in our lunchroom,” she says of the reminder that everyone can help make a difference in the community. “It’s there all year.”