The Women’s Centre of Calgary empowers girls with the support and tools they need to become thriving women.
As one of the few women’s resource centres in Alberta, the Women’s Centre of Calgary served more than 11,000 women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals in 2025, nearly double the amount served in 2024.
The Women’s Centre provides basic needs, peer support, and a wide range of free programs to an incredibly diverse community. Women and girls turn to the Women’s Centre for help with challenges like poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, settlement, domestic violence, isolation, and discrimination. They may be new to the city, experiencing family breakdown, looking for work, or simply seeking a place to belong. Whatever brings them through the doors, Women’s Centre staff and volunteers strive to ensure women and girls leave feeling more empowered than when they arrived.
An empowering space for girls
One of the Women’s Centre’s most vital programs is the Girls Program. Hosted in the Women’s Centre’s humble basement, it has been a source of empowerment for thousands of girls for more than a decade. Participants gather nearly every week to build leadership skills, discuss social issues, and engage with community in meaningful ways. Most importantly, the Girls Program offers a safe, empowering space for girls to both find their voice and use it. They learn that their words and opinions matter, and that there’s a real impact to be made in expressing themselves.
Whatever brings them through the doors, Women’s Centre staff and volunteers strive to ensure women and girls leave feeling more empowered than when they arrived.
“There’s something special that happens in gender-specific spaces. Girls are socialized around not talking too much, or not being too knowledgeable, or too outspoken. It’s a powerful thing… this plays into ‘space’ and how much space girls can take up,” says a former Girls Program staff member.
Changing the story
When girls’ voices go unheard, their needs go unmet. This can lead to decades of quiet adversity and increasingly complex stories of hardship. By meeting girls where they are and providing them with meaningful resources, the Women’s Centre interrupts these stories. Better, it completely changes the narrative. A young girl once struggling to speak English becomes a confident activist rallying the very people she once couldn’t communicate with. A shy girl, once uncertain of her ability to make friends, now brings joy and knowledge to those around her.
This is the magic of the centre: revealing the potential inside every girl through support and connection.
“I’ve never met a girl at the Girls Program who was the same as another one,” says a former Girls Program participant. “We all have our own opinions and ideas and thoughts and feelings in different matters, and we all have different knowledge and different passions.”
“I wish a place like this existed when I was growing up for my own mom,” says a Women’s Centre volunteer.
With help from Canadians like you, we can continue to instill confidence into girls, building generations of women who uplift one another and contribute to thriving communities.
Consider donating to the Women’s Centre of Calgary today. Your donation will positively impact women and girls not just during the holiday season, but all year long.
Help make girls’ and women’s season a little brighter. Donate today at womenscentrecalgary.org/donate.
