Beauty Nights bolster hopes
Service builds self- esteem in the Downtown Eastside, one makeover at a time
In 2000, Caroline MacGillivray was volunteering at a shelter in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside when she saw a woman struggling to curl her hair.
“She had bruises up and down her arms and she was trying to not cry ’ cause she was getting frustrated because she couldn’t get her arm up,” MacGillivray recalls. “So I offered to do it for her and she looked at me and she said okay.”
The interaction triggered a life- changing moment for MacGillivray. She began offering basic beauty services to the women at the shelter more regularly, and soon she was inundated with makeover requests.
“It got to the point that the women were starting to point out, ‘ It’s the beauty lady,’” she said.
In December 2000, Caroline organized the first official “Beauty Night” to provide beauty services to those in need, a group she says includes impoverished mothers, daughters, and seniors as well as sex workers.
As women streamed in, it became clear that the value of these services went far beyond esthetics.
“A couple of women said some really profound things, things like, ‘ People are touching me and they’re not afraid to touch me,’ or “People are touching me and they don’t want anything from me,’” MacGillivray recalls.
As Beauty Night grew, so did the services it was able to offer. Today, Beauty Night’s unique network of health care volunteers and street nurses has created a community of wellness that holistically treats more than 200 women a week.
Operating in various shelters around Vancouver, MacGillivray and her team provide an ever- expanding list of services from haircuts to reiki.
The alternative therapies offered have become as important a part of Beauty
Night as the beauty services that may have attracted many of the participants in the first place.
Acupuncture is the most popular service, according to MacGillivray, because it is a natural mode of pain management. It’s especially effective for women with a history of drug abuse, who have higher tolerances to traditional pain medications.
But perhaps the most influential service the Beauty Night team members offer is the simplest: they listen. Through their intimate knowledge of the program’s participants, volunteers are able to connect many of the women with other essential services like doctors or life skills
development programs, simply by learning of challenges as they develop.
“We’ve seen it time in and time out where women come in. They’re able to get their hair cut, they sit down, they’re able to talk to somebody, somebody actually hears what they’re saying,” MacGillivray says.
For her, this sense of personal value is the backbone of Beauty Night’s mandate to “build self esteem and change lives of women and youth living in poverty.”
Self- esteem is critical, MacGillivray says, “because if
we don’t have self- esteem, we don’t believe change is possible and how are we going to change ourselves?”
For more on Beauty Night’s program and services, visit www.beautynight.org.
Empowered Health airs Thursdays on CJDC at 11 a. m.; CHEK- TV Vancouver and Victoria, CFJC and CKPG at 7 p. m. and CHAT at 7: 30 p. m. The show is broadcast Tuesdays on CFTK at 11: 30 a. m. You can also view episodes online at vancouversun.com/empoweredhealth.