Sure.
Some of them relate directly to a project we're doing funded by Status of Women Canada called our national community of practice. White Ribbon is facilitating a connection of nine Status of Women-funded projects across Canada working on prevention efforts with men and boys. These diverse, incredible partners are implementing innovative programs across the country from Whitehorse, Yukon, to London, Ontario, and Moncton, New Brunswick, to Edmonton, Alberta.
We'll be producing in November an impact and promising practices report, which is looking at the evaluation data from all of those nine projects, and from that evaluation data we're creating a tool kit for action, which will help communities across the country do this kind of work.
There is one last section I need to get to which we call the non-negotiables about working with men and boys. There are four things that are absolutely essential when we talk about this work.
The first, recalling that it is part of a struggle for greater gender equality, is that engaging men and boys must take place from a human rights and women's equality perspective. If we aren't working on gender equality, we're not doing it right.
Second, it also has to be gender transformative. It has to challenge and change those harmful ideas about masculinity that are causing so much harm to so many people.
Third, it also has to take into consideration the shortage and scarcity of resources for women's issues already. As men working on gender equality and as allies, we can't contribute to structural inequalities around resources or lack thereof for women's issues. That's something we have to think about: building a bigger pie instead of cutting another piece from an already small pie of resources that are there.
Last, it has to be evidence based.
There are a great deal of challenges and I have three recommendations that we have to address in this.
I knew when Rosemary was here that there was going to be a lot of detail about a comprehensive whole-of-government national plan, so I won't go into a lot of detail on that. But any plan also has to include primary prevention work with men and boys across a spectrum and a life cycle of engagement. What we also need is increased support for opportunities to collaborate and work together, because there really is nothing that can accelerate innovation and the pace of change more than face-to-face work and the sharing of best practices.
In closing, I hope I've made a compelling case for the positive role that men and boys can play in preventing violence against women and girls. Not only is it an effective intervention, but there is a moral imperative to create a safer world for women and girls. In 2015 we must be outraged that 51% of our daughters, sisters, mothers, and female friends and colleagues are going to experience an act of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
There are also some practical considerations. In 2011 some research from a woman named Colleen Varcoe estimated the cost of violence against women at $6.9 billion per year. At the Shift project at the University of Calgary, they have estimated that for every $1 spent on prevention, up to $20 could be saved in downstream costs for engaging violence against women. Let's be clear: most of this violence can be prevented. For every perpetrator, there are hundreds of Glen Cannings, Paul Lacertes, and Max Bryants. We're engaging them and we think we can do better.
Thanks.