The Northwestern Ontario Women’s Centre has acquired Status of Women Canada Capacity Building Project funding to launch a new project called Analysis to Action on Gender Based Violence (AAGBV). This four-year project aims to enhance the systemic advocacy work being done in the community to improve the status of women and to increase the capacity of our Centre, as well as other Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario women’s organizations, to continue promoting social and systemic change towards gender equality.
The AAGBV project will focus on the following key objectives:
- increasing capacity for systemic advocacy on gender-based violence (GBV)
- reframing GBV policy reform work using Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression (AR,AO), Gender Based Analysis (GBA), and Trauma-Informed Approach (TIA) frameworks and Reconciliation Principles (RP)
- creating accountability measures to develop public awareness and analysis of local jurisprudence
- building capacity of NOWC and local women’s advocates to act as experts and/or trainers on AR/AO/GBA/TIA and gender-based violence
Through partnerships with local women’s organizations and advocates, we aim to develop a collaborative advocacy strategy on gender-based violence that is informed by anti-racism, anti-oppression, trauma-informed, and gender-based analysis frameworks; this advocacy strategy includes connecting with broader campaigns and efforts, the creation of an online platform and communication network, the analysis of legal system outcomes through this network, and the establishment of an annual “Think Tank” for local women’s advocates. Another facet of this project is to assess need of training for the target frameworks (AR, AO GBA, TIA, RP) and provide this training for local women’s organization and advocates – situating them to act as expert witnesses and deliver AR/AO/GBA/TIA training for system players.
The key activities of the AAGBV project will include:
- Working with local equality seeking women’s organizations and advocates to assess need of training for the target frameworks (AR, AO GBA, TIA, RP)
- Survey women’s group and individual women to assess the forms of gendered violence; survey communities experiencing gender-based violence and the existing system response to GBV that require systemic action
- Assessing local criminal court decisions on GBV cases and developing a feminist analysis of the outcomes
- Develop an online connecting hub that links issues, analysis, and action that builds and shares a gendered analysis toward systemic change with other women’s organizations
- Hosting an annual “Think Tank” for local women and women’s organizations to learn and talk about current policy issues
For those interested in partnering with this project or for more information, please contact Steph at [email protected]. We will follow up with a short survey, developed to determine how organizations are engaging with gendered violence at a local level, what gaps are present in other GBV response systems, and the need for training in the project’s target frameworks.
This project has been funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.
