Hi. Thank you for the invitation to be here today.
For almost 150 years, YWCA Canada has worked to improve the lives of young women and girls through programs, projects, and policy advocacy. As Canada's single largest provider of shelter for women and children fleeing violence, we place a high priority on ending violence against young women and girls. Empowering girls, developing young women's leadership, changing societal attitudes, advocating for violence prevention policies and education, and innovative programs and tools are all strategies in our approach.
To prevent violence against young women and girls, we need a societal shift in attitude similar to shifts in public acceptance of drinking and driving, and smoking in public places. Long-term public awareness campaigns were essential to making those changes and will be essential to preventing violence.
These need to be combined with preventive program initiatives and supportive responses for young women and girls who have experienced violence. Addressing violence against young women and girls requires a commitment to reconciliation and to inclusion, as well as specifically addressing both systemic and individual forms of violence against indigenous young women and girls.
Developing empowered young women and girls requires programs and spaces that foster leadership, empowerment, and self-affirmation. These gendered programs include safer spaces for young women to meaningfully engage in conversations around issues such as violence prevention that are adapted to girls and to young women.
Through our Power of Being a Girl initiative, girls 12 to 17 develop leadership by hosting events for World YWCA's annual Week Without Violence. YWCA GirlSpace provides an opportunity to raise awareness about violence and its root causes through workshops and projects, and our forthcoming Rights Guide for girls, young women, and gender non-conforming youth will empower girls by providing access to information on their rights.
Preventing violence against young women and girls also requires changing the behaviour of men and boys. A major issue on that front is consent to sexual activity. In a consent culture, everyone from judges and defence attorneys to campus sports teams and police officers understands, respects, and applies the law of consent that both people need to say yes to sexual activity; that silence does not mean yes, only yes means yes; and that it is illegal to have sexual contact with someone who has not consented, is unconscious, or is too impaired to give voluntary consent.
Social norms need to be shifted through consent education in public schools and post-secondary campuses as well as through mandatory training, leadership, and enforcement across police and court systems, up to and including removal of judges who fail to apply the law.
Public education strategies are needed to shift the stigma of sexual assault off those who are assaulted and onto the attacker, confirming that it is no more shameful to have been sexually assaulted than it is shameful to have your car stolen or your house robbed. It is shameful and criminal to commit sexual assault.
Girls and young women need safe, supportive homes. Most girls who leave home do so due to sexual abuse and violence. Others are escaping homophobia. First nations, Métis, and Inuit girls and young women may be leaving foster homes and group homes, or aging out of care without supports.
For teenage girls, homelessness carries the risk of violence, sexual exploitation, addiction, and criminalization. Teenage girls who have experienced homelessness stress the need for girls-only housing to provide a home that is free from sexual harassment and violence. Emergency shelters for young women are also key. Across the country, local YWCAs have initiated live-in programs for young mothers and their children, providing housing, support, education referrals, and advocacy as well as continuing outreach supports on transitioning out of programs.
YWCA Canada's award-winning Safety Siren smart phone app is an innovative tool to add to young women's safety. It's a free, downloadable application for iPhones, BlackBerry, and Androids that sends an emergency email to a pre-set contact with appropriate geolocation coordinates and places an emergency outgoing call to a pre-programmed number. It geolocates the user to nearby sexual assault centres, emergency hotlines, health centres, and clinics and offers a wide range of facts and information on women's health and wellness as well as women's health resources.
Finally, YWCA Canada's #NOTokay campaign aims to engage the general public in identifying violence against women in popular culture, social media music videos, television shows, and gaming, and to empower them to step up and say that's not okay.
Hashtag NOTokay aims to foster a society that instead of using violence against women, supports women and young women to fully exercise their rights and their freedoms.
Thank you.