Building Her Courage & Future

The Cause

Canadian Pakistani Support Group Association is a registered charitable organization led by women who believe in building self-sustaining communities through uplifting vulnerable population groups (immigrants, newcomers, refugees). Our flagship project "Maskan" is a transitional shelter home for women and children fleeing family violence and gender-based violence. Our mandate is to prevent and address domestic violence through awareness, knowledge building, and support to victims and survivors. Maskan serves women and youth from all ethnic backgrounds black, indigenous, South Asian, and other racialized communities. Since 2019, ~135 women and children have been provided direct support through our shelter program that provides emergency accommodation, access to caseworkers and counselors with multi-cultural competencies. We stand out in building a safe, secure, and healing environment for the victims and survivors who are in the recovery and healing phase. Our Outreach program addresses family violence through building awareness and knowledge building. We engage in community discussion through education series on healthy families, parenting, mental health, self-care, and healing from trauma with professionals. Our resources (sessions and panel discussions) have been accessed by over 20K online audiences in the pandemic.
We are seeking support to provide follow-up support to women and youth who move out of the shelter and are in the transition stage of their lives.
The project "Building Her Courage & Future" will engage girls and women who move out of emergency and transitional shelter and in the transition phase of recovery and healing from traumatic experiences. Building Her Courage & Future will organize a series of physical and virtual training sessions and workshops to benefit 150 women and girls (victims & survivors of violence) for a sustainable and healthy future. The program will arrange a series of training sessions and workshops focusing on recovering from trauma and self-care, self-defense and regaining confidence, healthy parenting skills, single parenting, parenting children exposed to trauma, effective communication, and essential digital literacy skills.
Through this project, we aim to build a sustainable future for women and girls who have experienced trauma and violence by providing the opportunities to regain their confidence, self-esteem and discover their potential to uplift themselves and the community.

Who Will it Benefit?

Since 2016, the Canadian Pakistani Support Group Association has been serving the community through multiple programs and projects. We have served around 135 women and children through the shelter and outreach program of Maskan. Our Community Engagement and Support program has served over ~3000 individuals through case support, food drives, essential needs drive, training, workshops, and community engagement. Our education and knowledge-building sessions have benefited and reached out to 20K individuals during the time of the pandemic. Our Youth Uplifting Youth CPSG group is a platform build by youth and for youth that has volunteered more than 2000 hours in the past 12 months through volunteering, advocacy, and youth engagement events.
This project will benefit 150 racialized women and youth who are victims or survivors of domestic violence who are residing or moved out of the shelter.

Maskan is more than a shelter and offers the opportunity to re-discover the women and girls who are supported through the program. We value our moments of success when our residents move out of the shelter with a wide smile and hope in their eyes for a beautiful future. Our residents undergo a transition journey that helps them regain their courage, confidence, and self-esteem and rediscover their strengths, and unleash the potentials masked by the traumatic experiences. Investing, training and uplifting these women will help build a sustainable community by building healthy families. Our aim is to train them to become advocates and sources of uplifting for other women and girls battling any form of violence and who need a bit of courage to stand up for themselves.