Team

Sharyn was born in Jamaica, indigenous land of the Arawaks. She emigrated to the “Dish with One Spoon” territory, which is a joint agreement between the Anishinabe, Haudenosaunee, and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes, at the age of eight. She has been an uninvited visitor living on the territory of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples since 1994. Sharyn completed her BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies with Lakehead University. She has been an outspoken feminist from a very young age. Her background includes working as an anti-violence facilitator, training other facilitators, writing curricula, and coordinating and creating sexual assault resources for the Southern Gulf Islands. She is passionate and grateful to be able to do this work and believes deeply in the power of community.

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Kemi is a cisgender woman of African descent raised in the Cherokee and Catawba territories (aka North and South Carolina). She has been an uninvited guest in Lekwungen and W̱ŚANÉC territories since 2002 working with artist-run centres and advocacy groups such as CineVic, the Students of Colour Collective, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and CFUV Radio. Kemi has an extensive background in using media art and movement as tools for promoting social justice, with a lens on gender and racialization. Kemi is excited to be working with AVP and is dedicated to building relationships through community events!

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Born and raised on the territory of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples, Paloma Ponti is a cisgender settler woman. As a white presenting person of “mixed-race”, Paloma often struggles to locate herself while both acknowledging her Colombian roots and her own white privilege, and is consistently deepening her learning about this. Paloma began working on sexualized violence prevention at age 15 as a member of Project Respect’s Youth Social Action Team and Hollaback! Victoria, BC. She continues to expand her understanding of systems of oppression as a UVic Gender Studies and Social Justice Studies student and now in her work at AVP. She is constantly inspired by the strong feminists in her life including her rad grandmother who taught the first Women’s Studies course at UVic in the 1970s. When not swamped by work and school, Paloma loves weaving, knitting and attempting to play the ukulele.

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Serena currently lives, works and writes on unceded Lekwungen, W̱SÁNEĆ and Esquimalt territories. As a mixed-race Punjabi Sikh/Welsh/Irish woman, and genderfluid and panromantic femme, she draws much of her creative power and fortitude from the unwavering ambiguity of her intersections. Her arts degree at UVic specialized in fiction and professional communication, among other subjects, and she can often be found musing at the worlds captured in a puddle’s reflection, with words in her heart and a wish on her lips. In addition to working with a number of social justice organizations in town, she previously moonlighted as a technical writer and website designer for government. On that note, please let her know if you have any questions about navigating bureaucracies and the corporate world, either on campus or beyond it. She can most easily be reached by messenger owl, or failing that, by email.

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Monica Ogden is a disabled mixie Filipina feminist activist, actor, storyteller, and accidental comedian. Monica uses she/her and they/them pronouns, and is the content creator of Fistful of Feminism on YouTube. Born as an uninvited visitor in unceded Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territory, Monica performs regularly with ColorQoded Collective, and her web series Fistful of Feminism seeks to promote discussions of consent culture, gender and identity, and challenge white supremacy and institutional racism in theatre, online, and media spaces. Monica has worked for national organizations such as The Canadian Improv Games, and there championed some of the first anti-racist, social justice workshops for high school students throughout Coast Salish territories with Yvonne Houssin. Monica is passionate about teaching, creating safer spaces, and community building, and has helped shape feminist, anti-racist policies for theatre organizations across Canada, including the Fresh Meat Festival in unceded Algonquin and Anishinaabe territory (Ottawa ON). Similarly, the theatre she makes is feminist, intersectional, anti-racist, and created collaboratively through decolonial frameworks, through duo NickelPumpernickel, and Rage Sweater Theatre Productions. In 2017, she premiered her solo show Monica vs. The Internet: Tales of a Social Justice Warrior at the Victoria Fringe Festival, directed by Ann-Bernice Thomas, and won Pick of the Fringe for “Bravest Show”. Other cool facts: Monica has endometriosis and chronic pain, speaks on social justice panels internationally, has an odd fear of megalodons, and thinks volunteers are the true heroes of any organization.

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Quin is a violence prevention worker at Peers Victoria and has been doing community organizing for seven years. They have a Bachelor of Physical Health & Education from Queen’s University and have been volunteering with AVP since the fall of 2016. Quin is into sunny days, jean vests, herbal tea, and heart to heart conversations.

Yasmine has lived as an uninvited settler on Kanien’kehá:ka and Siksika territories, before moving to territory of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples to study Political Science at the University of Victoria. Yasmine is a program assistant at the Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives. She has worked abroad in a refugee support centre in Malaysia. She has an honours degree in in Political Science and wrote a thesis on asylum-seekers, state-violence, human “illegality” and resistance. She is a cisgender able-bodied woman. As a “mixed race,” first-generation North American from Arab and European heritage, she continues to learn to acknowledge her white privilege, self-locate, and balance her identity within and without these various cultural contexts. Yasmine began volunteering with the AVP in the fall of 2016 in the hopes of learning about and contributing to communities and relationships of care and support.

Brydon is a graduate student in political science with a focus on cultural, social, political thought. Brydon was the Director at Large on the University of Victoria Student Society’s Board of Directors. While involved with student leadership he was a co-chair with the Let’s Get Consensual Consensual campaign and Brydon has been attending and participating on the Men’s Circle for three years. Brydon is a cisgender straight white settler man with able-bodied privilege. Born and raised on Nakoda territory, Brydon moved to Lkwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territory to attend university at UVic in 2011.