Just over $30,000 was raised for family violence victims at an inaugural event in Queenstown on Saturday night, which also celebrated inspirational women from across the south.
Awards & Gala for Women’s Refuge Services organiser Julia Strelou says the event became ‘‘something truly magical’’.
The event had dual aims — to raise money for Women’s Refuge Otago and Central Lakes Family Services to, in time, provide a safe house in the Queenstown-Lakes, and to celebrate female change-makers and leaders across the region.
‘‘Words can’t describe what I am feeling right now,’’ Strelou says.
‘‘I am so overwhelmed by the community’s support and by the empowering and supportive atmosphere we managed to foster at the event.’’
Wānaka-based Cassandra Treadwell won the Woman’s Touch Inspirational Woman Award.
Treadwell co-founded So They Can, an international non-profit focused on educating children in East Africa so they can break the poverty cycle.
To date, they’ve empowered more than 24,000 children in Kenya and Tanzania through 37 schools, and helped 474 teachers graduate from the Tanzanian Teachers’ College to support the next generation.
Mountain Scene’s Resilience Award went to Foster Hope Otago coordinator Juanita Willems, who lost her sight as a result of child abuse, but works tirelessly for the 100% volunteer-based charity which provides backpacks filled with essential items to children as they enter the foster care system.
Last year, the organisation provided 1400 foster children with packs, and more than 1000 Christmas presents.
K9 Medical Detection Charitable Trust founder Pauline Blomfield won the Fowler Homes Entrepreneurial Woman award.
New Zealand’s only canine medical detection training centre’s received international recognition, and she’s now gained approval to start stage two of the ‘Diagnostic Test Accuracy’, using patients’ urine samples.
And co-founder of Wānaka’s Food For Love charitable trust, Rebecca Sargison, won the Ray White Community Recognition award.
Sargison and her team of 186 vollies work closely with schools in Upper Clutha, and in 2020 started supplying daily school lunches to kids who would otherwise go hungry, and provide weekly home-cooked meals for those in need.
Strelou: ‘‘The work these women are doing has real impact.
‘‘They’re the ones making our community a better place and they deserve to be recognised.
“It feels incredibly special to have been able to offer them that.’’
