‘You can’t keep us down’ Women’s Centre reopens

Ashlyn Hornsby reckons the wāhine of Nelson are a “strong breed”.

The Nelson Women’s Centre coordinator says, this time last year they were struggling to keep their doors open, but thanks to the local community, they are officially up and running again.

In February 2024 it was revealed that an $80,000 shortfall in funding could see the centre permanently closed.

But over the last year, a behind-the-scenes group of determined women have worked hard to restructure, raise funds, and open its doors again for three days a week.

“We have gotten through this purely on spite, you can’t keep us down and when we come together as a community, we can do anything,” Ashlyn declares.

The former manager role has been disestablished and is now shared between Ashlyn and Augusta van Wijk, the funding and partnership coordinator.

“We share the responsibilities of managing the centre,” explains Augusta. As she puts it: “One of us works in the centre and the other works on the centre.”

The centre’s roots date back to the early 1970s, with the service offering a social worker, counselling, food support, a range of workshops, and a place for women to drop in for a chat and a cuppa. It is located at 44 Trafalgar St in an old villa, with the fire often roaring and Ashlyn’s dog Grendel curled up on the couch.

Ashlyn says last year when they were served with redundancy proposals, she knew they had to keep their counselling service going. So, the centre shut its doors to everything apart from this service.

“There’re minimal placements for councillors in Nelson, and we had about nine councillors at that stage, so I said, ‘Hey, we need to keep this service going, not only for our councillors, but of our community as well’.”

She says they are one of the most affordable counselling services in Nelson and the demand has always been high.

Augusta says in the past year they have undergone a complete strategy refresh and  have now secured the funding they need to bring back their other services, largely thanks to some generous donors.

“In order to go for some big funding, we had to do a business plan about what the next 12 to 18 months would look like, and a stakeholder survey.”

They have had financial support from the Department of Internal Affairs and Nelson City Council, who helped them with a grant to get a social worker back at the centre.

Augusta says they are already seeing quite a few women booking sessions – all through word of mouth.

“We want to move away from being so dependent on just  grants, because of the climate. It’s not that we don’t have a good cause, it’s just that there’s a lot of other need out there.”

To do this they have welcomed two tenants into their spare rooms.

“We’ve got a tenant who offers counselling services, and then we have another tenant who runs her small online business from here,” Augusta says. “We’re by no means out of the woods, it continues to be a struggle, and we’ll have to continue to apply for grants and continue fundraising.”

One of Ashlyn’s passions is making the centre accessible to the rainbow community.

“We have about five people within our organisation that are of the rainbow community and that gave us a really awesome niche to be able to offer social services to that community. I get emails from Rainbow people just thanking us for being somewhere to go.”

Ashlyn and Augusta say they would love more volunteers at the centre to help with fundraising or running workshops. Email [email protected] or call 5467986.