Fall 2018 Term Summary

Another semester is almost done, and we congratulate all of you on finishing your semester, whether you got through your classes and/or took time to look after yourself.

Whatever you did to make it through – we support you and we think you did a great job! We’re excited to share with you some of the things we’ve been up to this semester.

• Hiring – This semester, our wonderful support coordinator Marwo left for a year-long leave, and we are so excited for her to join us again next November. For the next year, we have the fantastic Sharyn in the support coordinator role!
  • Earlier this term we also hired a new volunteer lead, Monica and a workstudy student, Lauren. Both are rad students that we thank so much for joining our team. We apologize if we have been especially slow to reply to emails and requests this semester; hiring and training takes up a lot of energy and time for our small staff.
• Sexualized Violence Special Events – This team (composed of us, the UVSS, the Office of Equity and Human Rights and the Office of Student Life) met frequently this semester to bring you the Sexualized Violence Awareness Week in September. We’re really excited to be planning events for the spring as well.
• Tabling – From the Grad Student Fair, to the New Student Fair, to just hanging out in the SUB, we’ve done so much tabling this semester! We also tabled in the broader community at the Anarchist Book Fair and Two-Spirit Gathering.
• Community Events – Over the past couple months our community relations coordinator Serena has put in lots of hours to support various events happening on campus and in the wider community, including the National Day of Remembrance & Action Against Women at UVic, and Red Umbrella Day, both of which are coming up this month. We also supported the Tiny House Warriors build at UVic by donating staff hours and button making supplies!
• Volunteer Training – Congratulations to all our wonderful new volunteers who finished their training in November! These folks put in 35+ hours between May and November, learning about the root causes of sexualized and gender-based violence and the skills needed to run workshops, support survivors, and take on a range of projects at AVP.

September:

• 7 Support sessions
• 3 Consent workshops
• 2 Men’s Circles
• 1 Volunteer training workshop on sex positivity
• Sexualized Violence Awareness Week – in collaboration with the University of Victoria Students’ Society, and the UVic Office of Equity and Human Rights, and the Office of Student Life, AVP helped organize this annual week long event. This year we tabled for 3 days and organized an evening of performances and a panel on hookup culture and consent
• In September captain used their professional development monies to attend Indigenous Allyship Training facilitated by Pulxaneeks – Haisla First Nation. The topics covered in this fantastic learning opportunity were: what it means to belong to a lineage, how we’ve each been colonized, what the long term impact of this is, how this affects being in Right Relationship with Indigenous People, what’s at the heart of cultural appropriation, what is the right use of privilege, and what are some practical skills to use when building connection with Indigenous People

October:

• 9 Support sessions
• 2 Men’s Circles
• 1 Volunteer training workshop on territory acknowledgements

November:

• 5 Support sessions
• 1 Consent workshop
• 1 Supporting a Survivor workshop
• 2 Men’s Circles
• 1 Volunteer training workshop on harm reduction

We are still here for December! Support hours will continue until December 21st when the Student Union Building closes and our staff take a winter break. Keep checking our Facebook page for updates on support hours, call 250 472-4388 or email if you’d like to make an appointment or have questions about our support.

We’ve also got one more consent workshop before the term is over, on Dec 10th from 5:30-7:30. More info and registration can be found here.

We will be back answering emails on January 2nd, 2019 and in the office doing support starting the week of the 7th.