Happy Two Years of SFCC!

WOW! We’ve made it another year! Two years ago today, we launched Students for Consent Culture Canada – the formalized organization to house the work we were doing across so-called Canada. The 2019–2020 year has been life-altering for everyone. While our team usually works “socially distanced” across Turtle Island, this year we were even more so. Anti-Campus-Sexual Violence and Anti-Gender-Based Violence work have felt even heavier this year.

Over the past year, we have experienced many of the same highs and lows that the world has felt. After doubling our team last year, we are once again undertaking anti-violence work with limited capacities of all kinds. Because of this, the last six months have been spent working behind the scenes as we prepare the finishing touches on our upcoming research report “Open Secrets, Power and Professors: A Study on Rape Culture and Accountability at Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions”. Having expected this project to be released in Fall 2020, we are now trying to be kind to ourselves and pushed the release date to Early 2021. We look forward to sharing not only our hard work with you but also the bravery of those who have participated in the surveys and interviews that are the heart of this research project.

In the past year we had many accomplishments, too. This includes releasing “Moving Beyond Potential: Building Justice for Students in British Columbia,” which was presented to the BC government during the lobby week of the Alliance of BC Students. We were also invited by our BC partners to take part in creating a student submission on Data Collection, Reporting, and Institutional Accountability. It is our hope that this work can progress institutional accountability in BC and beyond. Outside of BC, the Our Turn Action Plan has also been used to support 250+ people as part of an international scholarship organisation.

Now more than ever we feel aware and are grateful for the communities we are a part of in doing this work. This year has led to many new partnerships with fellow anti-violence student organisers across the country, as well as around the world. We are incredibly excited about the potential of international anti-violence student organising with Not on My Campus UK, the STOP Campaign in Australia, End Rape on Campus in the US, Stop Sexual Harassment On Campus in New Zealand, and many more groups!

The SFCC team presented our work to a variety of organisations over this past year including the Law Needs Feminism Because annual conference, College Student Alliance Annual General Meeting, the Graduate Student Society of UBC, a student engagement webinar with Possibility Seeds and Courage to Act, and more. Additionally, our team continues to be active members of their communities, sitting on over 15 committees within institutions and all levels of government. This includes the Federal Government (WAGE) Gender Based Violence Advisory Council, BC MAEST Community of Practice for Anti-Sexualised Violence Education, Courage to Act Student Organizers Community of Practice, REES Youth Advisory Board, and Youthful Cities Research Advisory Committee, to name a few!

In June, we also experienced a change of leadership, with our dear 2018–2020 Chair, Connor Spencer stepping down and the amazing co-chairs, Chantelle Spicer and Tia Wong, stepping up to lead us into the next year. We cannot thank Connor enough for the heart and leadership she put into SFCC during our first few years, guiding us to where we are now.

We are excited to see what 2020–2021 will bring. Our co-chairs, Chantelle and Tia, as well as the executives and national team, are ready to make big things happen. We encourage you all to keep following along as we enter our third year as SFCC.

This year, much like last year, has highlighted the importance of appropriately celebrating the wins when they happen as in anti-sexual violence work wins do not happen easily nor often. To celebrate these wins we are asking our supporters, friends, chosen families, and those who want to promote consent culture to make a financial donation to our organization. We are doing this very vital work still primarily unpaid and we have so many plans for the future. A donation can assist us with ensuring our team members are better compensated for their labour, that our organization continues to make content in English and French, that we are able to compile and publish reports on the issues that matter most to the campus anti-sexual violence movement and (most importantly) that we can continue to hold institutions (both big and small) accountable to the students who frequent them.

If you can, please donate through our website or share this post! We cannot do this labour without supporters such as yourself.