Home Charities and Non-Profit Work Walk In Her Shoes in Vancouver

Walk In Her Shoes in Vancouver

March 5, 2020

Walk In Her Shoes is a fundraiser created by CARE to raise money for women and girls who live in poverty. In Vancouver, the event happens in early March.

Due to concerns about the coronavirus, the walk didn’t happen in 2020 or 2021. It doesn’t look like it happened in 2022 either. Hopefully it returns in the future.

Vancouver’s Walk In Her Shoes

Walk In Her Shoes is a fundraising event taking place in downtown Vancouver in March. The walk is about 7 km (or 10,000 steps) to symbolize the average 7 km walk that women and girls embark on every day to get clean water in the developing world. Over 500 people attended the event in Vancouver in 2019.

Money raised from the Walk In Her Shoes event helps women get jobs and allows girls to go to school rather than spend all day walking to find water.

The event in 2020 was a fundraiser for the Southern African Nutrition Initiative in Malawi which is a project that works to combat malnutrition in women who are of child-bearing age and young children 5 years old and younger. The initiative involves educating women on nutrition, creating community gardens, building wells for access to water and many other necessary things.

Where and When?

In 2020 the Walk In Her Shoes event was going to take place on Sunday, March 8th. It was going to start at the Creekside Community Centre located at 1 Athletes Way in Vancouver’s Olympic Village near the eastern end of False Creek.

Check-in was to start at 8:30 am and the walk was officially going to begin at 10:00 am. The walk is typically between one and two hours long.

The walk was cancelled in 2020 due to concerns about the coronavirus. A small number of people still turned out, and the fundraising part of the event still happened. Hopefully the event can officially return in the future.

Walk in Her Shoes Participants — 2020 Walk In Her Shoes Supporters

Registration

In 2020 registering for the event was going to cost $25 and folk would have received a $20 tax receipt and a pair of CARE gloves. If you were under 17 years old and walking with a parent or guardian your registration would have been free!

Day-of registration was also going to be available at the event starting at 8:30 am. Registering in advance, however, was recommended.

During the registration process, there was an option to join a pre-existing team or to create one with your friends. As a team you could have raised money together to contribute toward the project or you could have also raised money individually.

What to Expect

At the starting line while registration was supposed to be taking place, the band Kutapira was scheduled to perform in 2020. The plan was also for there to be a few market vendors, hot beverages, an education zone, kids’ activities, a silent auction and guest speakers. Gloria Mackarenko from the CBC was also going to be the MC for the event.

As the walk and other activities were cancelled in 2020, none of the above took place in the end (although a small number of people who turned out did still go for a walk). Hopefully the event can return with a band and an MC as there have been in previous years.