{"id":12098,"date":"2015-12-29T09:02:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T17:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/chic-charity\/"},"modified":"2015-12-29T09:02:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T17:02:11","slug":"chic-charity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/chic-charity\/","title":{"rendered":"Chic charity"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman battling homelessness or escaping an abusive relationship with children by her side is something Suzanne Dutson says she cannot imagine, but that does not stop her from trying to make that world a little brighter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to say, \u2018You aren\u2019t alone, we do care about you and we are willing to do what we can … because we want to be there for you as a group of women,\u2019\u201d said Dutson, a co-creator of the Facebook group \u201cJuneau Pay-it Forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Facebook group\u2019s administrators, made up of Dutson and her three sisters, asked for handbags and female toiletry donations a month ago to create care packages for women in the community. On Monday, those packages \u2014 in the form of gently-used designer bags \u2014 made their way to Juneau\u2019s AWARE (Aiding Women in Abuse and Rape Emergencies) shelter.<\/p>\n

No one at the shelter was aware the \u201cpurse project\u201d was underway, and Monday\u2019s drop-off was a complete surprise, said Saralyn Tabachnick, AWARE\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s beautiful they care about women and children in unsafe situations and want them to be in safer situations,\u201d Tabachnick said. \u201cWe\u2019re so fortunate in this community to get surprise gifts like this. It\u2019s wonderful to know people are thinking about us without us telling them to.\u201d<\/p>\n

AWARE houses and supports women and their children fleeing abusive homes. The organization also offers support to sexually assaulted women.<\/p>\n

Christina Love, an AWARE staff advocate, said AWARE has a program that gives women fresh garments after they\u2019ve undergone a sexual assault exam at the hospital. Now, AWARE has 23 purses filled with shampoo bottles, shaving supplies, mittens and scarves to give those women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (when receiving a gift like this) there is immediate fun and gratitude and joy,\u201d Tabachnick said. \u201cThen it sets in that, \u2018Wow, people in the community really care about us and really want to support us. They want us to live in healthy, safe situations and they want us to build stability and are offering gifts to support us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporting the community is something Dutson and her sisters \u2014 Jan-Marie Bearfield, Regan Tweedy and Rinny Heywood \u2014 are already known for. Last year, Alaska\u2019s former First Lady Sandy Parnell gave Heywood a Volunteer of the Year Award<\/a> for her involvement with the social media page.<\/p>\n

Dutson said she saw posts on Facebook from groups in other communities taking part in purse projects for women in need, so she posted it on her page to see if there would be interest in Juneau to do something similar.<\/p>\n

It also appealed to Dutson who said it seemed to be a large-scale version of something the sisters were already doing on a regular basis. When traveling, the sisters and other members of their family are known to carry small plastic bags with essential toiletries and spare change for homeless people they come across.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine having to deal with all of the issues that come with being homeless, just as a human, and then to not have your own comb or your own feminine hygiene products … just imagine how these little things would mean the world to someone,\u201d Dutson said.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming support from the Facebook group\u2019s nearly 2,500 members has inspired the sisters to make the purse project an annual event. Next up for them: men\u2019s shaving kit packages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a whole special population of people whose needs don\u2019t get met,\u201d Dutson said. \u201cThat\u2019s the point of the \u2018Pay-it Forward\u2019 site, to make a difference in someone\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victims of domestic violence or sexual assault in need of assistance from trained AWARE advocates can call a 24-hour crisis line, 586-1090 in Juneau, 1-800-478-1090 toll-free in Alaska. Advocates also accompany women during sexual assault forensic exams and other medical emergencies. For more information, visit www.awareak.org.<\/p>\n

To learn about the \u201cJuneau Pay-it Forward\u201d group, visit https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/448671281910269\/<\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Paula Ann Solis at 523-2272 or at paula.solis@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman battling homelessness or escaping an abusive relationship with children by her side is something Suzanne Dutson says she cannot imagine, but that does not stop her from trying to make that world a little brighter. \u201cWe wanted to say, \u2018You aren\u2019t alone, we do care about you and we are willing to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":12099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12098"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}