Winter 2021 term summary

Another semester done, congratulations to all of you for whom this is the end of your school year or even the end of your journey at UVic! With warmer temperatures starting to peak in, camas starting to bloom and hope for a safe return to campus on the horizon, we’re so excited for another spring and summer on Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories. Here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to over the last four months:

• Our amazing team of facilitators ran five Understanding Consent Culture workshops and five Supporting a Survivor workshops this term! While most of these were public workshops, we also ran special workshops for the Vancouver Island Drug Checking Project and the new incoming UVSS Board.
• In January, AVP Education Coordinator Paloma collaborated with Gender Empowerment Centre Coordinator (and now AVP Volunteer Organizer) Niko to deliver a workshop on the connections between Gender-based violence and colonization for the UVic Psychology Department.
• In March and April, we held a second installment of our (Un)Learning Together community workshop series. This time the workshop titles included, Queer Sex Ed., Disability Justice & COVID-19, Reproductive Justice, and May I? Sexualized Violence in the Service Industry. Watch our website over the next month as we’ll be posting the recordings of some of these amazing workshops.
• This term the AVP Men’s Circle held 8 meetings over Zoom!
• To round out the end of term, we ran a pilot of a brand new workshop on boundaries and the more practical side of bringing consent into our everyday lives. We’re now processing all that initial feedback and hope to be able to offer this workshop to the campus community and beyond starting in the Fall.
• This term our website got a much needed refresh thanks to our friends over at Pink Sheep Media! 

Staff Changes

This April, AVP said goodbye to outreach extraordinaire, Kemi and we wish her all the best on her new projects and pursuits! We’ve also had two new folks join our little but mighty staff team over the past couple of months: Niko Mumford (Volunteer Organizer) and Elaine Balogun (Community Coordinator). You’ll hear more from them in the coming months as we set a plan in motion to bring new volunteers into AVP and set up our Advisory Collective! Read our team bios.