I am just doing the intro, and then Nancy Beth is taking over and doing the rest.
My name is Andy Lou Somers, and I'm the executive director of East Prince Women's Information Centre in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. We are a resource and referral centre that works with women and girls in the central to western part of the province. We do programming that increases women's economic security and community workshops and programs that help girls and women to live healthy lifestyles.
I'm also a mother of six children and a grandmother of nine. I've learned the hard way that living on a small island that is fairly removed from the hustle and bustle of urban areas does not mean that we are not vulnerable, especially when it comes to cyber-violence. I'm beginning to think today that maybe it would be better if we were in an urban area, given the problems that we've had with this.
For the past five years we've been working with schools, youth groups, and service providers doing workshops on social media safety. Doing these workshops opened us up to a new world of scary things happening to our girls in cyberspace. It's terrifying to hear local stories, but the presentations we did opened the door for discussion.
Many of the young girls who heard our workshops and presentations felt safe and trusted us, telling us their stories of what they were experiencing or had experienced. What was shocking was to find out that no one, and I mean no one, seemed to know where to go for help, who to ask for help, or who could do anything about what was happening. There are no school policies or laws in the province regarding cyber-violence.
Many of the girls told us they would never tell their parents things that were happening to them because they were embarrassed and they feared that they would have their phones and computers taken from them. School counsellors and service providers have told us that they had no idea how to help in situations regarding any type of safety on the Internet as they're not trained or educated in how to do that.
Girls and young women were being targeted, and we just thought, how are we ever going to help? It was almost as if Status of Women Canada had read our minds, because they put a call out for proposals on eliminating and preventing cyber-violence against young women and girls, and we were successful in receiving funding to do that. Our project consisted of doing a needs assessment and bringing community partners together to work on a strategy and move that forward.
Nancy Beth Guptill did all the work on the needs assessment, so I'm passing it over to her.