With Nana aba Duncan (Media Girlfriends) and Eternity Martis. 

Sometimes, it’s the personal stories that can light a fire. Because in the flurry of activity around the viral Signal for Help, a hand gesture we released that means “I need your help”, we can forget we’re talking about real people.  

That’s why we’re releasing the Signal for Help podcast, a mini-series you don’t want to miss.

Gender-based violence is a problem, and we want to support survivors. But too many people who face abuse are shamed, silenced, and stigmatized, and too many people don’t feel confident in supporting them. The Signal for Help podcast explores how we can play a helping role through validation, active listening, and a survivor-led approach.   

Today, you’re getting a sneak peak of the first episode of the Signal for Help podcast, released this week. It's hosted by award-winning journalist, professor, and former CBC Radio One host Nana aba Duncan. It’s produced Media Girlfriends. This episode features Eternity Martis, journalist and editor who has worked with The Huffington Post, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, CBC, The Walrus, and more. In 2021, she published “They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up”, her bestselling memoir of her experiences with racism, partner abuse, and so much more at university. 

If you prefer to listen en Français, check out our French Appel à l’aide podcast produced by Zoé Gagnon-Paquin.  

Find both English and French podcasts on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcast content. 

A note about content: this episode includes discussion of gender-based violence. 

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at ⁠canadianwomen.org⁠ and consider becoming a monthly donor. 

Episode ⁠Transcripts⁠ 

Facebook: ⁠Canadian Women’s Foundation⁠ 

Twitter: ⁠@cdnwomenfdn ⁠ 

LinkedIn: ⁠The Canadian Women’s Foundation ⁠ 

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International Women’s Day as we know it grew out of early 20th century action to promote women’s rights and suffrage. After that, its popularity waned. But feminist activism of the 1960s and UN sponsorship of the day in 1975 revitalized it as an occasion to promote women’s rights around the globe.

We need to remember gender justice activism as more than a single movement, as many intertwined movements across many communities. It’s easy to forget how dynamic and evolving these movements have been. We are particularly thankful today to intersectional feminist thought-leaders for addressing how the diversity of our experiences both converge and diverge. They see justice for one as intrinsically tied to justice for all, and nothing less will do.

In this vein, we’re interviewing Dr. Dawn Lavell Harvard, Ph.D., on her take on what it means to Indigenize International Women’s Day. Indigenization as a process of naturalizing Indigenous knowledge to transform spaces, places, and hearts. “The goal is not to replace Western knowledge with Indigenous knowledge,” says Pulling Together: A Guide for Curriculum Developers, “... Indigenization can be understood as weaving or braiding together two distinct knowledge systems so that learners can come to understand and appreciate both.”

Dr. Harvard is a proud member of the Wikwemikong First Nation, the first Aboriginal Trudeau Scholar, and has worked to advance the rights of Aboriginal women as the President of the Ontario Native Women’s Association since she was first elected in 2003. She is Director for First Peoples House of Learning at Trent University and was President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. She is mother of three girls. Following in the footsteps of her mother Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, a noted advocate for Indigenous women’s rights, Dawn has been working toward the empowerment of Aboriginal women and their families ever since joining the Board of the Ontario Native Women Association as a youth director in 1994. She is also a co-editor of the original volume on Indigenous Mothering, “Until Our Hearts Are on the Ground: Aboriginal Mothering, Oppression, Resistance and Rebirth,” and has released a book along with Kim Anderson, “Mothers of the Nations.” Recently, Dawn co-edited a book with Jennifer Brant, entitled “Forever Loved:  Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada.”

Relevant links: Pulling Together: A Guide for Curriculum Developers (Antoine, A., Mason, R., Mason, R., Palahicky, S. & Rodriguez de France, C., 2018), First Peoples House of Learning at Trent University

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor. 

Episode Transcripts 

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation | Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn | LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation | Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Monica Samuel, Founder and Executive Director of Black Women in Motion.

Understanding the abuse and discrimination Black women, girls, and gender-diverse people face offers insight on how we can better support their healing journeys.

Misogynoir is a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey to describe the distinctive form of anti-black sexism faced by Black women. As limited as race-based data collection in Canada is, the evidence is stunning.

Black women more likely than other groups of people to live in poverty. They're more likely to be paid less than white women. Though they are highly educated, they face disproportionate barriers to entrepreneurial financing and support. They’re racially profiled and over-incarcerated. They’re over-represented when it comes to chronic illnesses and infections like COVID-19.

Add misogynoir to the peril of gender-based violence, and you get studies that show that Black women are less likely to be taken seriously when they report violence. You find fewer responsive and relevant services for Black survivors of gendered abuse.

Starting this Black History/African Liberation Month and going all year around, how can we be changemakers in light of these longstanding problems?

Monica Samuel (She/Her) of Canadian Women's Foundation grantee partner Black Women in Motion joins us to talk about it.

Monica is an African-Caribbean settler living in T’karonto/Toronto, the Dish With One Spoon wampum treaty territory. She is an equity and anti-violence educator, consultant, community builder, and social entrepreneur. Her work as an educator over the last 11 years has focused on anti-oppression, mental health, sexual health, community economic development, and gender-based violence. She has worked with dozens of businesses and academic institutions. Monica is Founder and Executive Director Black Women in Motion, a Toronto-based, survivor-led, grassroots organization that empowers and supports the advancement of Black survivors of gender-based violence. As an advocate, Monica’s work in the non-profit sector is focused on confronting the deep-rooted and sustained impacts of anti-black racism and gender-based violence and re-imagining systems that truly serve the whole of society and not a few. Celebrated in Canada as 2019’s Top 100 Black Women to watch, Monica’s dedication and approach to social justice work have created trauma-informed and culturally-centred resources and opportunities for Black survivors and Black youth across the Greater Toronto Area.

Relevant Links: Three Essential Insights for Black History Month, Black Women in Motion

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Episode Transcripts

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Brianne Miller at Nada.

In these rocky economic times, affordable, sustainable food seems elusive. Can you do food business in a way that does good? How are women and equity-seeking people leading the way?

Lots of women and equity-seeking people get into entrepreneurship. It makes sense. Those who face barriers to stable, safe employment have to get creative.

They often get entrepreneurial. They have dreams of not only running their own businesses, but doing good in the world while they do it.

But these same entrepreneurs also face barriers to growing and financing their business ambitions. That’s why our Investment Readiness Program is so special. It helps business enterprises that do good in the world - run by and for women and gender-diverse people - get investment-ready. Some of these social purpose businesses are still in the concept stage. Some are in a launch or growth stage.

This brings us to Brianne Miller, founder of Nada in Vancouver, British Columbia, a certified B-Corporation and carbon negative package-free grocery store and delivery service on a mission to connect people to a more equitable, just, and regenerative food system. Nada is one of our Investment Readiness Program Investees that's up and running and doing its thing.

Brianne is a marine biologist turned social entrepreneur with a passion for driving positive change through inspiring collective climate action. She is committed to revolutionizing the food system across the supply chain so that future generations can continue to enjoy and benefit from the world’s oceans. She is a United Nations #notwasting food ambassador, a Coralus Venture, UBC Land & Food Systems mentor, and a former member of Vancouver Food Policy Council. Her food systems work has been featured widely in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company and Nada was most recently recognized as 1% for the Planet's Business Changemaker of the Year.

Relevant Links: Canadian Women’s Foundation Investment Readiness Program, Nada

Special offer: first time customers can get $20 off orders over $100 with code 'ALRIGHT', using this link: https://www.nadagrocery.com/discount/ALRIGHT

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Episode Transcripts

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Munira Abukar at Stitch Lab T.O.

Women are more likely to live in low-income households than men, especially single mothers. Indigenous women, racialized women, women with disabilities, and trans people also face a high risk of poverty.

Economic stability is the ultimate goal of the Canadian Women’s Foundation’s Investment Readiness Program, funded by the Government of Canada’s Social Innovation/Social Finance Strategy. It equips women and Two Spirit, trans, and non-binary people to succeed in social entrepreneurship.

When they launch their own business ventures, many of them think: how can I generate revenue and help my community at the same time? How can I do business while making the world a better place? The fact that these entrepreneurs face disproportionate barriers to starting businesses and getting financing means we miss out on the economic benefits of their success and on the positive social, cultural, and environmental impact they could create to help us all.

Caught in the daily news cycle of rising costs and inequities, Investees of our Investment Readiness Program are a bright spot. Munira Abukar represents one such Investee in Toronto, Ontario. She’s Project Coordinator of Social Enterprise at Scadding Court Community Centre and Co-Founder of Stitch Lab T.O. Stitch Lab works with local women designers to create their own one-of-a-kind products. It offers women skill development opportunities, and their products are made from repurposed and rescued fabric. Munira is a specialist high skills major with a focus on entrepreneurship. She’s also a former small business owner and long-time grassroots community organizer. She brings her community experience and love of textiles to Scadding Court Community Centre.

Relevant Links: Canadian Women’s Foundation Investment Readiness Program, Stitch Lab T.O.

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Episode Transcripts

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With journalists Garvia Bailey, Saba Eitizaz, Christina Frangou, and Salimah Shivji.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of gender-based violence and sexual assault.

It’s 2023 and we’re in Season 5. We start with online harassment and hate faced by women and racialized journalists. We need them to give voice to what’s often left unheard in Canada. This makes the harassment and abuse they experience at disproportionate levels particularly vexing.

It’s harmful to them as people and as media workers, and it runs counter to the goal of making our world better and fairer. We can’t achieve that goal without a diverse news media landscape and truth in reporting.

Online harm and harassment are on the rise globally. We often point fingers across borders, but the Coalition for Women in Journalism says that Canada is the country where the greatest number of women journalists were exposed to organized troll campaigns in 2022. This is gendered violence, and it’s unacceptable. Digital attacks aimed predominantly at women and racialized journalists victimize, belittle and, ultimately, undermine trust in facts and jeopardize press freedom.

We collaborated with the Canadian Journalism Foundation and the #NotOk campaign on a discussion with journalists in December 2022. Today’s episode features a snippet of this conversation, focused on the lived experiences of our panelists. It was moderated by CBC News correspondent, Salimah Shivji. It featured Garvia Bailey, journalist, broadcaster, and co-founder of Media Girlfriends, Christina Frangou, freelance journalist and 2022 winner of the Landsberg Award, and Saba Eitizaz, Toronto Star producer and co-host of This Matters Podcast.

Relevant Links: Full video of The Chilling Tide of Abuse Faced by Women Journalists panel, Feminist Journalism Episode of Alright, Now What?, The Landberg Award application

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Episode Transcripts

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Jennifer Delisle.

An online search pulls up several news stories about women and girls who used the Signal for Help in dangerous situations. The Canadian Women’s Foundation launched the Signal in 2020 in the wake of rising abuse such as intimate partner violence and sexual assault as well as the rising use of video calls. The Signal for Help has gone viral more than once since then.

But a signal is only as useful as its response. Can you respond to any sign or signal of abuse? Our research found that people in Canada believe that everyone needs to play a role in ending gender-based violence, but fewer feel confident and competent to respond. Many say ,“intimate partner abuse is none of my business if it doesn’t directly involve me.” 

That’s why we launched the Signal for Help Responder digital learning journey and online mini course. We know people care and believe in ending gendered violence. But it takes a lot to turn care and belief into action that’ll make a difference to survivors. And it takes a lot to change our mainstream culture of stigma and silencing to a culture of survivor support.

What does it take to change individual behaviour? There are many theories, but they’re all clear on one thing: you can’t take a person out of their context. No one changes in a vacuum. Changes come from a mix of internal and external pushes and pulls.

Our guest is Jennifer Delisle, Learning Designer for the LX Labs team at Onlea. She has been a learning designer for over ten years, designing and writing courses for post-secondary education, industry, government, and non-profits. She helped develop the recently launched Signal for Help Responder Mini Course. She has a background in academic instruction and research and a PhD in English. Also a published creative writer, she has a passion for bringing storytelling and clear, engaging language to every learning experience. She is a settler in Edmonton/Amiskwaciwâskahikan in Treaty 6.

Relevant links: Signal for Help Responder digital learning journey, Signal for Help Responder Mini Course

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Episode Transcripts

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Corinne Ofstie.

Content note: this episode addresses femicide. “December 6, 1989 was a terrible moment that became a transformative movement,” writes Canadian Women’s Foundation President and CEO Paulette Senior in The Toronto Star. “Every year on December 6, we need to revive the momentum anew. Advocates made sure that the 1989 massacre led to stricter firearm laws and new anti-violence efforts. We need the same energy in 2022 to end abuse in sports and male-dominated sectors, build safety for Indigenous women, Black and racialized women, women with disabilities, and others at elevated risk, and reverse rising rates of femicide, family violence, and sexual assault we’ve seen in Canada over the last few years. There is never a year when Dec. 6 should not rejuvenate our movement.”

We still have much to do to end this preventable violence. Many of us are mindful of and mourning the recent Winnipeg police announcement of charges laid against a man for the murder of four Indigenous women, a man linked to white supremacist ideology. Many of us are mindful of and mourning these rising rates of gender-based violence, the impact of which will reverberate for years.

Corinne Ofstie (she/her), Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS), addresses the issue of femicide today. Amongst her other work, Corinne is a member of the Rebuilding Lives Committee for the Canadian Women’s Foundation and an Expert Advisory Panel member of Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability.

Corinne is a registered social worker with expertise working as a cross-sector coordinator within community, system and government organizations in both the sexual and domestic violence services sectors.  In her role with AASAS, Corinne works to achieve the goals and objectives of numerous special projects including the Healthier and Safer Alberta Workplaces project which includes an anti-workplace sexual harassment awareness campaign and training.  Among her many achievements, Corinne co-chaired the provincial Collaborative Justice Response to Sexual Violence Committee and was a member of the Gender Equality Network of Canada from 2017 to 2020. In 2018, Corinne was awarded Avenue Magazine’s #Top40Under40.

Relevant links: Be a Signal for Help Responder

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor.

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Ziyana Kotadia and Karen Campbell.

Content note: this episode addresses sexual violence. Too Scared to Learn: Women, Violence, and Education by Jenny Horsman (2013) uncovers how violence negatively impacts a student’s ability to learn. It focusses on women’s literacy, but the broader lesson is clear. None of us can properly learn when we’re scared and targeted. This has huge implications for girls, women, and gender-diverse students in all schools, as well as huge implications for post-secondary environments like colleges and universities, where sexual violence is a particular problem.

It’s the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, a great time to talk about ending sexual violence on campus. Our first guest is Ziyana Kotadia, an advocate and writer in her final year of an Honours Specialization in Global Gender Studies and a Minor in Feminist, Queer and Critical Race Theory from Western University and Huron University College. She’s Chair of the Safe Campus Coalition and a contributor to the Our Campus, Our Safety Action Plan, a call for action from students all over Canada. Ziyana is passionate about poetry, performance, and politics and has a keen interest in exploring intersections among the worlds of academia, art, and advocacy. She was the 2021-2022 Vice-President University Affairs for Western's University Students' Council, one of the nation’s leading student organizations, where she championed gender equity projects and the voices of over 35,000 undergraduate and professional students as the Chief Advocate and Stakeholder Relations Manager to the university's senior administration. Her most recent publications include her op-ed “Universities Need a Consent Awareness Week in Ontario” in the ‘Toronto Star’, her second-place winning poem "Heir to A Garden Heart" in ‘Symposium’, and her academic article "Poetry, Prayer, and Politics: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Womanhood in the Canadian Ugandan Khoja Ismaili Diaspora" in ‘Liberated Arts: A Journal for Undergraduate Research’.

Our second guest, Karen Campbell, Director of Community Initiatives & Policy at the Canadian Women’s Foundation. She speaks new research we did in collaboration with the McGill University iMPACTS initiative, documented in a report entitled: Social Media and Mobilizing Change for Community Impacts. It explores the connection between students, social media, and sexual assault on university and college campuses. 

Relevant links: Our Campus, Our Safety Action Plan, Social Media and Mobilizing Change for Community Impacts: Results Report

Please listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. If you appreciate this content, if you want to get in on the efforts to build a gender equal Canada, please donate at canadianwomen.org and consider becoming a monthly donor. 

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn 

LinkedIn: The Canadian Women’s Foundation 

Instagram: @canadianwomensfoundation

With Kris Archie, Chief Executive Officer of The Circle on Philanthropy.

In Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Edgar Villanueva says, “What we can focus on with decolonization is stopping the cycles of abuse and healing ourselves from trauma.” He speaks to how finance, philanthropy, and the ways we “do charity” have been set up to uphold colonialism, systemic racism, and discriminatory outcomes.

Philanthropy, giving, and charity work is often seen as neutrally “worthy”. To ask questions about it can seem like an attack on something inherently good. But the way charity and philanthropy are done in Canada has a long history. There are structures and rules and practices in place that have led to troubling trends today. These trends include very few philanthropic dollars in Canada going to Indigenous, Black, and other racialized communities doing things by and for their own communities. It connects to the reality that diverse women, girls, and Two Spirit, trans and non-binary people have barely benefitted from philanthropic and charity dollars over the years.

Like so many other ways of doing things, the way we do charity and philanthropy in Canada needs challenging and decolonizing, too.

For National Philanthropy Week this week, our guest is Kris Archie (@WeyktKris on Twitter), Chief Executive Officer of The Circle on Philanthropy (The Circle). Kris is a Secwepemc and Seme7 woman from Ts’qescen, a mother, aunty, and engaged community member. She is passionate about heart-based community work and facilitating positive change. In all of her roles, Kris works to transform philanthropy and contribute to positive change by creating spaces of shared learning, relationship-building and centering Indigenous wisdom. She is a PLACES Fellow Alum of 2015 with The Funders Network, a board member with Environment Funders Canada and JUMP! Canada and a newly appointed Dialogue Fellow with Simon Fraser University focused on Indigenous ways of knowing and Philanthropy.

Relevant Links: The Feast House, The Circle on Philanthropy’s Partners in Reciprocity program, Pay Your Rent campaign

Listen, subscribe, rate, and review this podcast and share it with others. Visit our website and donate today: canadianwomen.org

Facebook: Canadian Women’s Foundation

Twitter: @cdnwomenfdn

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