We are seeing the incidence of sexual assault rise on university and college campuses and CEGEPs across the country. There are a lot of women's organizations that are active on campuses, but for some reason it's not enough. It doesn't seem to be working, so we thought we'd target student-led organizations, ask the young people what they think would work, so that's what's different about this call for proposals. We wanted student-led organizations to be a part of it.
Of course they don't have the capacity, so they partnered with....For instance, in Edmonton, they partnered with the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton or they may have partnered with the Y in certain places, but the whole point is they may not have the capacity to deliver the service, but they had some really good ideas. There were some really interesting things that came out of that.
In total we funded 21 different organizations. It was a national approach to carry out these projects. They tackle a wide range of issues. There are harassment issues, but more often than not it's about sexual assault and things like safety plans on campus. There are still places where there aren't safe walk programs, where young women are walking back from their classrooms late at night, or there's no transportation on campus, so they have to walk quite far to get to a bus and they're alone. So even community safety plans on campus to create a safe walk program are needed. Other universities and campuses seem to be more advanced, so they were looking at more sophisticated approaches to getting the message out regarding the resources they have available.
In Port Alberni, British Columbia, the Alberni Community and Women's Services Society is working with the North Island College on a really great project that affects women in that area. As I mentioned before, in Edmonton, the sexual assault centre is engaging male students in a couple of the campuses to work on anti-violence against women on the university campuses.
Here in Ottawa, were working with the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women to engage students at the University of Ottawa, Carleton, La Cité collégiale, and Algonquin College to end violence against women.
In Montreal, Quebec we're funding a YWCA project that engages francophone students from three different CEGEPs in ending violence against women on their campuses.