Blooming House Women’s Shelter raises more than $33,000 from first fundraiser.

Early 2018, while working for a small tech company in Charlottetown, Liz Corney was invited to an event hosted by Startup Zone.

It is an event where people pitch ideas and spend the weekend working with a team.

“You’ve got to pitch an idea,” her boss John Kimmel said.

“Well, I don’t have an idea for a business,” she replied.

At the time, Corney knew Charlottetown was without a women’s homeless shelter. It had been seven years since the last one closed in 2012.

“That’s such a big gap and a need for our society. Okay, I’ll pitch that idea,” she thought.

To her surprise, people liked it and encouraged her to start.

She got a team and started planning and doing more research since she had no background working with non-profit organizations.

Corney is now the director of development and co-founder of Blooming House.

In 2019, Blooming House opened their doors. Since then, they have served more than 200 women with an average of 60 women being served per year.

They have people from different backgrounds and situations come in, from those evicted with nowhere to stay to others fleeing violence and abuse.

Corney said Blooming House was initially started to help women get off the street during winter but with the increase in demand, they’ve had to stay open year round.

“We planned to be opened for four months to get through the very cold months and then we never closed because the need was so great. We were still seeing women even when it wasn’t cold outside,” Corney said.

This came with its cost.

As a non-profit organization, Blooming House needs financing. Before COVID they used word of mouth to obtain money. When COVID hit the funding reduced.

Corney said, they were unable to host events because people did not have the time or money.

Post COVID, Blooming House was able to hold its first fundraiser in September 2023, Ride for Refuge. The aim was to gather Islanders to walk or bike in support of Blooming House. Two routes were taken. People who decided to cycle rode from St. Peter’s Road to York Road.

According to Corney, 100 people showed up, from the elderly to teens, even mothers with their kids in strollers. The community came together, after this there was a barbecue to end the day.

“We’ve had other organizations fundraise for us, but this was our first time doing it ourselves. The Ride for Refuge fundraiser, it’s something we can call ours and it was a great success,” she said.

Blooming house raised more than $33,000, which is 84 per cent of their goal of $40,000.

The donations are going toward their operations and paying stuff.

The group are still taking donations and plan to host more fundraisers into the future.