2013: A Year for Gratitude

On January 1, 2013 I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I had a job that I found incredibly frustrating on good days, few friends in Kitchener, where I had moved for said job and a lot of uncertainty about the future. 

However, I hadn't lost hope. I started the year by creating a gratitude jar with small notes of what I had to be grateful for. I applied to two Ph.D. programs, continued to apply for other jobs, wen swing dancing and led about 300 people around the World in committing 14 random acts of kindness for Valentine's Day. 

At the end of March my maternity leave contract ended. I didn't have a new job or a solid idea of what I was going to do next. I was waiting to hear about my Ph.D. application to the University of Ottawa and a hiring process at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. I also felt extremely discouraged by how I perceived my job performance at the position I was leaving, thinking that if I couldn't cut it as an admin assistant, I wasn't going to cut it as much else. 

Things seemed pretty bleak. However, now I can see that the decisions I made in the first two weeks of April have changed my life in dramatically wonderful ways. 

One of the first things I did when my job ended was start volunteering for World Accord where David Barth and Nelson Rosales allowed me to help them design a volunteering program for the organization. 

In that same week my room mate Brock and I decided to try to mobilize people in KW to advocate on behalf of the Conflict Minerals Act which had just had its first reading in Parliament on March 26th.

Over the weekend I decided to attend an improv workshop held by Theatre on the Edge, returning to one of my favorite activities after exactly 5 years. 

In the second week, I was accepted into the International Development Ph.D. at the University of Ottawa. 

Here's how these choices played out. Over the summer I volunteered with World Accord as their volunteer coordinator, where I had my first opportunity to supervise others. This experience introduced me to a number of wonderful volunteers who challenged and inspired me in their own ways. I also had the opportunity to organize World Accord's annual cycling fundraiser Cycle for Sustainability which combined three of the things I love: community outreach, event planning and fundraising. This was a challenging experience and I definitely made some mistakes but I am so incredibly grateful for having had the opportunity to work with World Accord. 

While I was spending my days at World Accord I was spending my evenings with the KW Just Minerals Campaign. Brock and I managed to mobilize about 8 reliable co-conspirators by early June and we held the organization's first event, attended community events and supported activities in Paul Dewar's office. This experience was also very exciting and introduced me to new people in KW and helped me to get a feel for their activist community. I was so grateful to have had the opportunity both to lead and also to leave the organization in inspired and competent hands when I left in the autumn. 

I also began attending Theatre On the Edge workshops religiously and became friends with its members for whom the description of "salt of the earth" would be a dramatic understatement. They even let me perform in a show.

And so, the decisions I made in that first week of unemployment resulted in me making more friends than I ever thought possible in such a short period of time, gaining meaningful work experience and falling in love with KW.

At the end of the summer it was time to head off to Ottawa, my accommodations set up with one of my best friends, Alex Keenan (who never lost faith in my eventual return to Ottawa), to start my Ph.D. The first month was a bit of a slog, I think my office mate is a bit surprised that I didn't drop out, but then things started picking up. I have two incredible research assistantships, one working with a Prof who focuses on the role of NATO in Afghanistan who has been very supportive and the other working in a public outreach capacity with Partnership Africa Canada. I am also now one of the volunteer coordinators for the national Just Minerals Campaign.  At school I'm the external representative for our departmental graduate student association as well as taking French courses along with my mandatory classes. As you can imagine, this leaves me with a pretty tight schedule but I absolutely love everything I'm doing, which makes the times things seem overwhelming seem not so bad.

I abandoned my gratitude jar after about six weeks, and it's a good thing I did because this year has given me so much to be grateful for they never would have fit in that box. 

While I appreciate the love and support I've received from everyone who made this year possible I want to thank a couple of people specifically.

David Barth and Nelson Rozales: Thank you for inviting me to work with you at World Accord. I continue to be inspired by your work; you helped me to develop invaluable skills and I appreciate your guidance. 

Brockenshire: Thanks for encouraging me to do something in support of the Just Minerals Campaign, without you it never would have happened. Also thank you for putting up with me as your grumpy room mate in the pre-April 2013 period..

Shayne Sangster: Thanks for being a reliable volunteer, source of advice and generally restoring my faith in humanity.

Alex Keenan: For never giving up on me and being an awesome room mate :).

Everyone at TOtE: For making me feel so welcome and sharing yourselves with me. As Adam Benjamin has pointed out on several occasions I love you all.

Craig: For being my nemesis in public, and being an incredible supporter and cheerleader in private. 

Susan: For giving amazing hugs, organizing movie nights, introducing me to new boardgames and for being a reliable source of transportation. 

Folks at Hep Cats (especially Greg, Mark, David, Amanda, Sara, Nigel, Kristin and Kevin): Thanks for teaching me, leading me and laughing with me. 

Everyone who helped me move to Ottawa (Brockenshire, Sarah, Taylor, Adam Becevello, Robin and Julian): I honestly could not have done it without you and I still have no idea how to repay you.

Finally, I am grateful to my classmates and profs who have worked alongside me, teaching, guiding and sharing their talents with me. 

Below are some of the more memorable photographs from this year:

Free Hugs in a snow storm of Valentine's Day

First Screening of Blood in the Mobile with KW Just Minerals Campaign

Amanda signs the Conflict Minerals Act Petition at Open Streets Waterloo

To Remember is to Work for Peace

Every year on Remembrance Day I take the time to reflect on peace, freedom and remembrance. 

This morning I woke up to a radio commentary chastising people who choose to wear white poppies instead of red ones to signify their pacifism. As a peace and human rights activist it was disheartening to hear the DJs lam-bast people who choose to remember in a different way.

People who have experienced or participated in war live with it's consequences everyday. The sad truth is that our government does little to support veterans, the minimum to support refugees most of whom have experienced violence and war, and almost nothing to support international peace initiatives. 

So one day a year they fly fighter fighter jets over the capital, play bag pipes and make speeches and they say that they remember. 

If you remember the people who fought in World War I and II and if you remember those who lost their lives in genocides and armed attacks in which we failed to intervene,it is not only for one day a year. 

So please remember tomorrow. Take it as an opportunity to be kind, supportive and loving to your neighbors, to support community development to make hard lives a little bit easier, and to promote peace in your own life and also to our leaders. 

Recall that to remember, is to work for peace.

Living a Life Free From Violence; Blog Action Day 2013

My blog post today is part of Blog Action Day 2013 with a focus on Human Rights.

Human Rights is a broad topic, so broad in fact that I hold an undergraduate degree in the subject. I might have written on any human rights issue but today I'm writing about the right which has always been the most important in my mind, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, which I'll be describing here as the freedom from violence.

The right to life, liberty and security of the person is the first right listed in the UN Declaration on Human Rights. It is also found at the front of many national rights documents including in Canada and the U.S. and the idea enjoys some primacy when discussed as part of a hierarchy of rights. Its spirit is also at the root of other rights including the freedom from torture, however I feel it is adequate enough to say that without life, liberty or security of the person it would be difficult to enjoy any other human right.

Why am I calling it freedom from violence? I feel that security of the person and the right to life necessarily suggest freedom from violence. I also feel that violence is a private threat to the enjoyment of the basic tenets of human rights as well as a public issue. While the state may not overtly exercise violence over a population, the failure to intervene in private violations has many of the same results, the inability to access the means necessary for a basic standard of living.

One of the reasons I'm focusing on violence for this blog is that September 21, 2013 was a difficult day for my friends. Several of my friends lost their friends in the siege of Westgate Mall in Nairobi Kenya. The tragically ironic part was that those lost included people who were working towards an end of violence and poverty in East Africa and other places in the World. It was also a bad day for my friend Mzi who was nearly beaten to death for his watch and wallet in Cape Town South Africa. Although I work with issues relating to violence on a daily basis I was not prepared for these events to affect people who I am close to and gave me the opportunity to see violence from this very real and close perspective. 

I'm also writing this post for the people who I've met through my work both academically and as a development practitioner. As an academic I have had the opportunities to interview individuals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who spoke about the violence perpetrated against their family and friends and sometimes themselves. Sadly these stories make up only some of the statistics of the over five million people who have died there, the 400,000 women and men who have been raped and millions more who have been forced to flee their homes. 

As a development practitioner the majority of my work has concentrated on victims of violence. The refugees that I have worked with in Canada have shared glimpses of their past lives and what brought them to Canada but the cooperative members I worked with were much more direct. I worked with entire communities that had been displaced by the Lord's Resistance Army who primarily described peace as the absence of violent conflict and the presence of development products such as education, healthcare and improved markets at which to sell their goods and produce. 

Violence can be perpetrated by individuals, groups, corporations and states. Each individual case is different while equally horrible. However, there are some universally accepted and experienced consequences of violence. Of course people experience trauma, injuries, displacement and sometimes death. Violence has a societal impact too. It can lead to missed days of work, the inability to fulfill societal and community obligations and it can also lead to pervasive insecurity. Armed violence in particular has a known link to stagnant or even the reversal of development in low income countries and fragile states meaning that not only are people in countries such as Syria and the DRC victims of war but they also cannot access health care if they are sick or injured, their children cannot go to school and it is incredibly difficult for local farmers and entrepreneurs to do their jobs.

We need to do better for each other to ensure that everyone can enjoy a basic quality of life which includes the respect of their basic human rights.

On an individual level we can do quite a lot to effect change. We can live our own lives peacefully which should be reflected not only in our actions but in our language and thoughts towards one another. We can support friends and neighbours who have been affected by violence whether it came from spousal abuse or violent crime. We can also support those in our own communities by volunteering for organizations that support victims of violence including women's shelters, distress lines, refugee settlement programs and other. 

Nationally we should hold our governments accountable for actions they take both nationally and internationally that may result in violence when it is safe to do so. This may include responding to police brutality, economic and political divestment from weapons manufacturers and the support of peaceful interactions between countries. 

Internationally we can support organizations who provide humanitarian support to the victims of violence including the Red Cross and MSF and those who work towards preventing violence and human rights violations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Project Ploughshares in Canada and many others. 

In Peace. 

Why the U.S. Shouldn't Unilaterally Intervene in Syria

My desire to comment on the crisis in Syria has been creeping up gradually over the last few months. With increasing calls for intervention in Syria since the discovery of a chemical weapons attack against civilians, the United States and some of their allies have made a call for a military intervention. While measures, sanctions and possibly a military intervention is needed to end the civil war in Syria  the U.S. and their allies should not act alone. Here's why.

International Law
Under the United Nations Charter a state can only use military force to defend itself or to respond as part of a U.N. sanctioned mission to an act of international aggression. In order for the use of force to be legal under international law the United Nations Security Council must pass a resolution justifying the use of force. Such a resolution has not passed and is unlikely to pass due to opposition from China and Russia. 

There is precedent for a unilateral intervention from regional defense organizations including the NATO Intervention in Kosovo, however such action undermines the ability of the U.N. to function on an ongoing basis and could have significant political and diplomatic consequences given the opposition of China and Russia to a strike. However, the U.S. looks like it is positioning itself to act alone for which there is no precedent. The U.S. cannot justify an invasion under the U.N. Charter because it has not been attacked and the nature of the human rights perpetration committed by Syria are not international acts of aggression. 

Another legal reason the United States may not be the best state to intervene in Syria unilaterally is the fact that it has not ratified many of the major humanitarian laws including the 3rd and 4th Geneva Conventions. Further, the U.S. has shown an increasing and ongoing lack of respect for other international legal norms including territorial sovereignty and legal rights (such as the right to a fair trial) through the use of drones to attack targets in the Middle East. Lack of adherence to these conventions could contribute to negligent and excessive loss of life, poor treatment of prisoners of war and increased civilian deaths.

Impact on Syrian Civilians

A military intervention in Syria is likely to worsen the suffering of civilians in Syria already affected by the actions of Al-Assad and rebel groups. Some civilians would be likely to die as a result of military strikes that missed their marks or that were targeting officials hiding in civilian areas. Many more civilians would be affected by a loss of critical infrastructure including a loss of electricity, water and phone lines as a result of an attack. Depending on the length of the intervention civilians might also have difficulty leaving their homes to find food and go to work dramatically worsening an already tense humanitarian situation.

What is more worrying is the potential impact of an impending or full-attack on the action of Al-Assad. If, as media reports suggest, Al-Assad has used chemical weapons against his own populations there is nothing stopping him from doing it again. It is possible that if the U.S. decides to strike before exhausting all other options that Al-Assad may launch further chemical attacks. This risk is also present with interventions led by an international contingent but somewhat less likely if Syria's allies are involved in the intervention. 

Diplomacy and the United Nations 

There are many alternatives to a unilateral use of force by the U.S. to end the crisis in Syria. If the UN concludes that a chemical attack has occurred several steps can be taken to remove Al-Assad and protect civilian populations. The U.N. Charter also includes provisions for peacekeeping missions which, if given a Chapter 7 mandates such as what is currently in place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has the capacity to use force not only to protect civilians but also to disarm aggressive forces.  

A softer approach might include the use of political or economic sanctions, the indictment of Al-Assad by the International Criminal Court for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity and also negotiations. 

Not only would a U.N. sponsored approach protect civilian lives it would also reduce the risk of raising global military and political tensions between China, Russia and the U.S. It would also strengthen the role of the U.N. in international peacekeeping measures and increase their effectiveness. 

If this is an issue that you're concerned about you can always contact your MP to express your concern. If you would like to contribute to efforts to help civilians in Syria or the over 2 million refugees created from the civil war, consider supporting MSF or the International Red Cross. 

Launching the KW Just Minerals Campaign

As you may know I wrote my M.A. thesis on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that I remain an advocate for development-based peacebuilding in the eastern part of the country which continues to be plagued by violence perpetrated against civilian populations.

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been ongoing since 1998, has resulted in over 5 million deaths as a direct and indirect result of the conflict and the rape of over 400,000 women, girls and occasionally men.

The conflict has been perpetuated by a large number of actors based on a variety of motivations including politics, ethnicity and inequality. However, a great deal of the conflict has also been fueled by access to resources. The DRC has one of the largest mineral deposits in the world including rubber, gold, diamonds and coltan, a mineral compound found in most cell phones. Rebel and foreign armies have continually sold minerals acquired through illegal mines to fund their involvement in the conflict contributing to the humanitarian disaster described above.

Conflict Minerals are purchased for further processing, smelting, refinement and are used in our cell phones, laptops, televisions and other electronics. Canadian companies contribute to the trade of conflict minerals through the purchase of raw materials from the DRC at all stages of the refinement process. As consumers we treat our electronics like their disposable and toss them aside so that we can have the newest technology while people in the DRC pay with their lives. 

On March 26, 2013 MP Paul Dewar introduced the Conflict Minerals Act, Bill C-486 to Parliament. The Act, if passed, would require Canadian mining companies to show due diligence when purchasing minerals from the Great Lakes Region of Africa (including the DRC) and to report the source of their minerals annually. This would allow consumers to make informed choices about the products they buy and hold mining companies accountable for their actions overseas. (It's worth noting the United States has already passed similar legislation under the Dodd Franks Act.).

The next week my roommate Brockenshire looked at me and asked "are we going to do something about this?" and all I could do was smile and say yes. 

Soon I was in touch with Paul Dewar's office learning about the grass roots base for the campaign and how they wanted average people to support the Act. So Brockenshire and I got to work recruiting team members. 

In mid-April we formed the KW Just Minerals Campaign. As a group we are committed to creating awareness and gaining support for the Conflict Minerals Act and creating awareness about conflict minerals and the conflict in the DRC.

Soon we had a group of 8 who worked together to hold the KW Just Mineral Campaign's first event, a screening of the film "Blood in the Mobile." The film documents the narrator's journey into the Eastern DRC to discover the source of the minerals in his cell phone. In the film he comes face to face the corruption which is rife among Congolese officials, he meets a former child labourer who takes him to the Walike mine where he had worked where they mine coltan which is used in capacitors for cell phones. The film actually shows the inside of one of the mines and the deplorable conditions that artisinal miners work in and makes the link that profits from the mines are used to supply weapons to armed groups clear. 

The film does miss a couple of points as well. It doesn't do the complexity of the conflict in the DRC justice nor does it give any credence to the possibility of a Congolese sponsored solution to the ongoing violence. 

The film screening included a call to action from the Kitchener Center NDP Federal Candidate Peter Thurley, an introduction to the history of the conflict presented by myself and a follow-up discussion presented by two of our other members Cassandra and Nadine. 

We had about 30 people attend the screening, which I'm told is a great turn out for an event of it's nature. Of those thirty attendees 4 signed up to become members of our organizing committee. The event even gained media attention from the Rogers' Cable show News Talk Local as well as from the Kitchener Waterloo CBC Radio Morning. 

We didn't stop there. We've been attending community events including Open Streets Uptown Waterloo and the KW Non-Violence Festival. We have received more than 100 signatures for the Official Parliamentary Petition in support of the conflict Minerals Act.



In the last week I had the opportunity to do an extensive interview for the Waterloo Record about our campaign and today I gave a presentation to the Engineers Without Borders Toronto Professional Chapter against mineral exploitation and the conflict in the DRC. 

I'm sad that I'm leaving this all behind to move back to Ottawa but I can't wait to see where my friends and co-conspirators take the campaign. 

Want to read Bill C-486?
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6062040

Want to sign the official parliamentary petition?
http://petition.ndp.ca/conflictfree

Balancing Information with Inspiration; Running a Successful Campaign.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a human rights activist. I'm currently working on a couple of campaigns and twice in the last week I've been accused of being too academic. Naturally, this issue concerns me because I'm about to embark on my Ph.D. but have no intention of leaving the picket line or abating my participation.

The first time it happened was when I tried to go back to working for Public Outreach. I successfully worked for Public Outreach for nine months in 2011, raising money for Amnesty International, the Red Cross and Doctors' Without Borders. Going back to the organization seemed like a sure thing since, PO in Kitchener is fundraising for Doctors' Without Borders and I can now say I've visited some of the places they've worked. Oh boy, was I wrong.

On my first day I got several phone follow ups (A phone follow up means the person wasn't ready to make the decision at the door and needed to be followed up with later)  and a one time gift but failed to get anyone to sign up for monthly giving. My second day I did a little bit better, I signed one person up for monthly giving, got a higher one time gift and more phone follow ups. Unfortunately, that didn't quite cut it and so I was let go (I can go back and try again in a month though).

The feedback that I got, about why I was failing to perform, was that I was providing too much information to people at their doors and that I should have followed the PO-prepared script about malnutrition rather than the one that I wrote on my own. 

The reason I prepared my own script was both because I had experienced success in the past talking about what I know well and also because the PO prepared wasn't as accurate as I would have liked it to be. The script described what we generally see in advertisements from World Vision and Christian Aid around Christmas, starving in East Africa with flied buzzing around their heads, unable to do anything to lift themselves out of poverty. This was problematic to me for two reasons, one personal and one factual. On the personal level, I've lived in East Africa and I'm pleased to say I didn't see any listless babies with flies on their faces while I was there. I did see lots of children with distended stomach happily playing or on their way to school but these children and their parents are far from being unable to take care of themselves. They do however deserve a hand up to help them overcome the health conditions that we in the West have helped to create through exploitation and inequality.

Factually, I found the script problematic because Doctor's Without Borders itself is opposed to the image of starving children. They are an organization that is committed to building the capacity of local populations so that they can treat their own sick and advocate for equal access to medicine. They do intervene in famines and in cases of war but the organization does a lot more than that too. The script that they provided wasn't only at odds with my experiences in East Africa but also with the stated goals and objectives of the organization they were trying to raise funds for. 

I digress. 

The second time I was accused of being too academic was when discussing my presentation at an upcoming screening of Blood in the Mobile by the Kitchener-Waterloo Just Minerals Campaign. The individual warned me to try to avoid giving too much information in my overview of the history in the conflict of the DRC because facts don't inspire people. This didn't sit very well with me given my recent experience with Public Outreach. Both events have left me feeling ineffective at what has become my main focus in life.

My feelings of inadequacy led me to vent to my new room mate, who suggested that if I wanted to feel more inspire or be more inspiring that I should watch Kony 2012. Of course she didn't know about my anger and blog posts about the film and that she had opened a mighty big bag of worms. 

Still thinking about my apparent lack of inspiration I decided to follow some new faces on twitter and looked up Sverker Finnstrom who wrote one of my favorite books about Northern Uganda. While Finnstrom doesn't appear to have a twitter account I did find a tweet with an article he wrote in response to the Kony 2012. 

The article outlines many of the failings of Invisible Children including the shortcomings in the assertion that the Ugandan and American armies are the heroes while the LRA are the villains, despite the fact that the U.S. and the Ugandan governments were complicit in some of the LRA's attacks or used similar strategies (The Ugandan army also uses child soldiers). The article also decries the portrayal of the LRA as a barbaric group that practices witchcraft and has no particular motivation for it's vicious campaign. If you read Finnstrom's book Living with Bad Surroundings Finnstrom provides an overview of what some of the LRA's key motivations are. 

Before I really do become too academic here, my point is that the Kony 2012 campaign seemed to initially inspire people before it fell apart because of factual error and the rhetoric it used to describe all of the actors in the conflict and it's solution. 

If we intend to effectively engage people in a fundraising, political or human rights campaign we need to provide them both with the facts and with some inspiration and let them make an informed decision about how they are going to be involved. From a fundraising standpoint people should receive enough accurate information to make an informed decision about where there money is going. If we don't we're either going to have disengaged funders or our funders are going to stop their donations once they realize that we're not who they thought we were.

 From a human rights standpoint people who are engaging in a campaign need to have their facts straight so that when they do engage through public speaking, signing positions or whatever other way that they get involved that they're not misrepresenting the issue they're advocating for and so that they're not advocating for an inappropriate solution to the problem. 

After all it was two simple facts that made me want to get involved with campaigning for Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; more than five million people have died their through a cacophony of actors and motivations and the international community hasn't done anything to stop it.

If you want to read Finnstrom's Article:
http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/554/552

If you want to learn about the KW Just Minerals Campaign:
https://www.facebook.com/kwjustmineralcampaign?fref=ts

Celebrating 10 Years of Action

(Geneva, 2009)

On March 15, 2003 I participated in my first anti-war protest. It was a bitterly cold day, I was 16 and to say that my mother wasn't happy with my decision, is a tremendous understatement.

Two weeks earlier I had attended a youth peace vigil against the Iraq War in Mississauga with some of my highschool friends. We carried signs, lit candles, listened to a speech by Jack Layton and made the evening news. 

It was at the peace vigil that I heard about the anti-war protest for the first time and I was game. Most of my friends in my grade didn't really get what the big deal was. The prospect of a war in a far away country with whom they had no connection to didn't seem to trouble them, and I suspect they were growing tired of listening to me talk about it. Fortunately I had made some friends in my grader 12 history class (I was in grade 11) who invited me to come with them to the protest in Toronto.

Despite my mom's misgivings she drove me to my friend's house and we took the GO train downtown (this might have been my first time downtown without adult accompaniment). Once we arrived at Yonge and Dundas Square we were surrounded by other protesters. It was invigorating to know that I was standing against something I didn't believe in with more than 10,000 people in Toronto and hundreds of thousands of people around the World. We chanted slogans, held our signs high, and marched to city hall. On my way home I remember seeing news footage of the protests from around the world playing in Union Station. The protest was winding down but I was just beginning.


 (A picture from March 15, 2003. Source: http://tamarind18.com/shock-and-awe-the-war-we-could-not-stop)

In the days that followed the protest, then Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to allow Canada to become involved in the War in Iraq, a small consolation to the Iraqi civilians as the bombs started to fall. I never would have imagined that 10 years later I would be working with refugees who escaped the same war. 

A year and a half later I moved to Ottawa where I started my B.A. in Human Rights and Law. In the first semester I attended two anti-Bush protests, one less than 100 people and one over 1000. My distribution of flyers for the second protest raised ire in a couple of my floor mates in residence who covered my door with propaganda in favour of the Iraq war. I returned the favor but denied any involvement until the event passed into being just a funny story.

For some time after that I went through a quieter phase and focused on my academic endeavors, developing the knowledge I would need to be an effective activist.

And then there was facebook. 

I got facebook in late 2006 to maintain contact with the friends who I met on exchange in the Netherlands. In June 2006 I inadvertently got sucked into CBC's great Canadian Wish List. The Great Canadian Wish List encouraged Canadians to make a wish for Canada's 140th Birthday. I was curious about the project so I checked it out, and was soon dismayed to learn that the top wish was to end abortion in Canada. Naturally I made a counter wish, wishing that abortion would remain legal and figured that some more important issue would take the lead. I guess abortion was the more important issue. My wish eventually received over 8,000 votes and the opposing wish had close to 10,000. The event received limited news coverage, likely because of the sensitivity of the subject, however I was on both TV and on the radio to mark the event. 

At the same time that I was leading an online campaign for something that I consider to be a fundamental women's rights, I was also getting my first taste of the importance of participating in community development as a component of activism. That summer I volunteered at the Dixie-Bloor Neighbourhood Centre which supports immigrants, where I supported a settlement worker and trained all of the settlement workers in the office on human rights mechanisms in Canada. This was a really wonderful experience for me and I learned a lot about the importance of sharing knowledge and ideas at the grassroots level and I also learned a lot about issues facing refugees. 


(With the staff at the Dixie-Bloor Neighbourhood Centre)

I've continued to try to contribute to social change through working and volunteering at the grassroots level since that time. This is most evident through my work with refugees and as a fundraiser. 


(Building a Shack in the North-West Province in South Africa)

I've also dedicated a great deal of my academic work to human rights, activism and social change. I wrote my M.A. thesis on the causes of the demand for small arms and light weapon in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I worked with Congolese refugees living in South Africa and recorded their stories of violence, heartbreak and hope which I amalgamated into the final draft of my thesis. While I was writing my thesis I had hoped that it might contribute to better peacebuilding and development practice in the DRC but I wonder whether anyone has read it beyond my peer editors (thanks again guys!) and my thesis committee.

Since I finished my M.A. I've also had a number of opportunities to engage in public speaking events. As passionate as I am about my work I still find it absolutely terrifying to stand up in front of groups and deliver my message. I guess it's an area to work on.

Above anything else, I think my experience in Uganda has made me appreciate my ability to engage in this kind of work more than anything else. Aside from the somewhat humourous anecdote of avoiding being teargassed in a number of protests in Canada only to be caught in the cross fire of some during a riot in Kampala, being in Uganda really helped me to develop a strong appreciation for democracy and a healthy civil society. I've written before in this blog about the tiredness of many of the young people who I met in Uganada, and their acknowledgement that their system wasn't working but that they couldn't imagine a way out. I'm also aware of the accusations of torture and other forms of violence against political dissidents in the country.  

(Idle No More)

Over the last ten years I have emerged as a young adult who truly believes that you need to work towards the change that you want to see in your community, country and world. I've also have developed a strong appreciation for the importance of human rights education. I am incredibly greatful that I've had the opportunities to engage in the human rights issues that concern me most including armed violence, equal opportunity and women's rights. 

I hope to bring the same passion and enthusiasm with me into my next 10 years of action. 

If you'd like to start engaging with issues that matter to you here's somewhere to start:

1. Get Informed - read books, news paper articles or anything you can get your hands on so that you have your story straight.
2. Write a Letter - If you're short on time you can always write a letter or send an email to a politician about an issue that's of concern to you. Just remember it's important to research who you're writing to ahead of time, since I have the experience of being on the receiving end of such letters as a student working for the government.
3. Vote - vote in local, provincial and national elections. vote in student elections. vote any time you can. It's one of the most effective ways of making you voice heard. When you do remember all of the people around the World who don't get the chance to.
4. Go to  a protest - keep it peaceful if you can.
5.  Share your knowledge or skills - you could be a volunteer, give a presentation or even write a blog! The best way to get other people on your side is to share with them!
6. Be the Change - You might think this is totally cliche but leading by example, whether it's being a vegetarian, buying sweat shop free clothes or simply not littering, is a great way to reach people

Wait! Just one more thing. There's still a war going on in Iraq. It's not front page news any more but people continue to die as a result of sectarian violence and the American need for hegemony and oil. Many of the clients at Reception House, who are government assisted refugees have been displaced as a result of the war. Nothing separates our lives from those living war zones except the chance of where we are born.

Iraq Body Count Estimates that up to 120,000 civilians have died in the Iraq War.

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

International Women's Day

A year and a half ago I had the pleasure to attend the ISIS WICCE Peace Expo in Kasese in Western Uganda. The Peace Expo invited local and national peace activists from across Uganda and neighbouring countries to come together to discuss sexual violence and child marriage. What was particularly striking about the event, was that it was almost exclusively attended by women from societies traditionally dominated by men.

Near the end of the Expo the Deputy-Prime Minister of the Rwenzori Kingdom invited all of the international participants, including myself, on to the stage and asked us to take an oath. The Oath was to reduce gender based violence in their home communities.

Last year I was in the West Nile over International Women's Day and trying to cope with the aftermath of the release of the Kony 2012 video. This year I'm at home and I'm ready to start fulfilling my pledge.

In Kasese I learned that there were over 3000 child mothers in a region with a population of just over 1,000,000. Many of these girls were the victims of rape or physical abuse and found themselves in their situations as a result of poverty and lack of opportunity to do things we take for granted like go to school. Gender inequality is far more deeply rooted in Ugandan society than just a few thousand child mothers. It seemed to be ever present in daily life ranging from the unwillingness of female participants to participate in group discussions in Lira, to learning about women being expected to kneel or bow before their husbands or other men when they entered the room throughout the country. When coupled with the necessity of working alongside expectations that women were solely responsible for maintaining their homes and caring for their children the burden of womanhood also appeared to be quite high.

So how does this related to gender based violence and gender inequality in Canada?

In Canada it's estimated that 1 in 17 women will be the victim of rape and that the majority of those women. Most rape victims are between the ages of 15 and 24, 80% of rapes happen in the victims' home and 70% of rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim (Rape Victims Support Network).

Further, it's estimated that half of all Canadian women have survived at least one incident of sexual or physical assault and almost 30% of women have been assaulted by their spouse (Canadian Research Institue for the Advancement of Women). Further, on any given day 3,000 women are staying in shelters in Canada (Canada Women's Foundation). In addition many women also experience emotional abuse which is characterized by name calling, alienation from friends and family and manipulation.

Of course the pervasiveness of gender inequality is also evident throughout Canadian society too. Media and popular culture encourage women to conform to a stereotype of a thin, young looking woman. Income inequality continues to occur throughout the work force and gendered language is prevalent in daily conversations, such as the use of the word rape as an adjective to describe something other than a coercive sexual act.

It's easy to explain a lot of this away as statistics. Many of us think we don't know anyone who has experienced what I've described above.

But we do. We just don't talk about it.

When I was 18 I met a man who was smart, funny and charming. After we started dating he didn't want anyone to know about our relationship. If he didn't get his way he'd give me the silent treatment. When I tried to breakup with him he would cry and beg for forgiveness.

When we moved in together he started calling me names, insulting my friends and becoming increasingly aggressive. One night he pushed me down, I blew it off feeling that I had provoked him. But it was only getting worse. At the age of 21, after a particularly frightening incident I left him. I might have left sooner but I didn't recognize what was happening as abuse because I was too embarrassed to ask my friends if their boyfriends were doing the same things.

When I did finally leave it was with a tremendous amount of support from friends who helped me move and gave me somewhere to stay, my mom and my aunt who gave me their time and helped me financially and a counselor. Not all women who face my situation, or worse, have that amount of support.

Women, just as men, deserve an opportunity to live their lives to their full potential in an environment free from violence and discrimination. 

I hope that we can continue to work together for a more equitable and just world.

Some resources:

Canada Women's Foundation:
http://www.canadianwomen.org/facts-about-violence


Canadian Research Foundation for the Advancement of Women
 http://www.criaw-icref.ca/ViolenceagainstWomenandGirls


Rape Victims Support Network
http://www.assaultcare.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=58

Women's Crisis Services of Waterloo
http://www.wcswr.org/ 

14 Random Acts of Kindness

Let's face it, I don't have the best relationship luck. So, every year when Valentine's Day comes around I usually try to bury my head in the sand or avoid it all together.

This year I tried something new. I decided to commit 14 random acts of kindness and invite all of my friends to do it too. I also asked them to invite their friends.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Initially the idea seemed somewhat popular with my closer friends but the facebook event stagnated at about 50 participants for several days, until February 13th. Remarkably, on the 13th the number of invitations soared from 700 to 3,500 and 300 people had indicated they planned to participate.

This was very exciting so I refreshed the facebook event every five minutes to watch the number grow. I also set up a blog where I hoped to share the stories of the participants who I encouraged to post their stories and pictures on facebook.

Valentine's Day itself was certainly one of the best I had. I started the day by preparing breakfast for my room mate and his lady friend. I left a Valentine for our landlords, gave out 6 flowers to 6 strangers, bought coffee for both of the people behind me in line at my regular coffee place AND gave the barristas baked goods. I even smiled at everyone who I passed on the street. At work I gave my immediate coworkers stars telling them why I thought they were wonderful, shared baked goods and gave our maintenance woman, whose patience and tact I admire greatly, a Valentine's Day card. I also wished everyone who called the office a Happy Valentine's Day. At lunch I participated in a 1 Billion Rising Flashmob raising awareness about violence against women. After work I met my room mate and a friend and gave out free hugs for an hour in a snow storm. At the end of our escapade I bought coffee for two young people who had been hired by a tax company to stand outside with signs advertising the firm.

 I was also the recipient of several acts. My good friend Alex sent a very kind email first thing in the morning, I received a gift card from a stranger while giving out free hugs and my room mate shared some soup with me for dinner.

At the end of the night, after my room mate left for his Lady Friend's place I went to bed happy, but also a little bit lonely and disappointed that more people hadn't decided to join in.

There were definitely a couple of challenges with the event that I hadn't anticipated.

A similar event called generosity day started circulating around the same time my did. The main difference was the exceptional use of multimedia tools to advertise and promote the event. They had gifs for people to use on their facebook pages and they even had a youtube video. I think that might have been one of the factors of the event not reaching more people. 

There were also somewhat more profound challenges.

Some of my friends and others had ideological and technical dilemmas about the event. Some people suggested that we should be kind everyday, which is true.Others were put off by the number of acts, 14. Of course there was nothing special about the number other than the event occurring on the 14th of February and instead it was more of a goal, but instead was a goal to strive for.  Others still seemed to be hung up on the possibility that because they had been invited to the event and asked to do a certain number of acts that any acts they did commit could not be random at all. Of course the randomness was never the point of the event. 

The goal of my event was to bring people together on a day that can be isolating, and do good in their communities. My hope was also that once people got started that they might just realize how easy it is to have a positive impact on an individual and on a community by doing something as simple as smiling at a stranger, and I'm happy to say that at least 300 of us did just that.

I think I might just do it again next year.

I hope you'll join me too. 

What I've Been Up To

So I went quiet for a while again.

I mentioned in my last post that I had been quite busy up until the beginning of October winning bi-elections, fundraising for the organization I worked with and working on a swing dance performance.

October was a hard month for me. All of the excitement that surrounded the events listed above died down and I was left with a job that often leaves something to be desired and a small social circle in KW. It also started getting cold.

When I lived in South Africa I arrived back to a Canadian winter in December 2009 and wore outdoor clothing inside for about a month while I re-acclimatized. When I came back from Uganda it was spring time so when fall came in 2012 it was the first cold temperatures I had really experienced for any duration since March of 2011 and let me tell you 10 degree day time highs were cold and I was miserable.

Fortunately by the time November came around I remembered how to dress for the weather and things started to improve.

What I've Been Doing at Work
  To recap I'm currently working at Reception House Waterloo Region which is an organization that supports Government Assisted Refugees for the first year that they are in Canda with things like finding housing, getting a health card and adapting to the new culture in which they find themselves.

Working as the admin assistant as Reception House Waterloo Region is a straightforward incredibly difficult job.

What is straightforward about it is my job description. When we receive notification from Citizenship and Immigration Canada that we're receiving new clients, I open a new file, and schedule the clients' intake with their caseworker. I also work with a volunteer to help clients apply for their OHIP cards and schedule a weekly health clinic. I also answer the phones, act as a bouncer for our office and assist with things like report writing and stocktaking.

What is incredibly difficult about my job is responding to the needs and expectations of our clients and my coworkers. Working with our clients can be challenging for any number of reasons although the biggest one is that I usually don't speak the same language as they do and so it's difficult to communicate even simple messages such as that their caseworker will call them back in five minutes or to please wait in a chair. Our clients also have high expectations about what their lives are going to be like in Canada, which are not easily met. Government Assisted Refugees receive a minimal living allowance and often need to take English classes which makes it difficult if not impossible to work. 

It's also difficult to manage the expectations of my coworkers and supervisors at times. Each of my colleagues has a very different way of working and prefers to carry about their business in their own way. For example, one of my colleagues frequently asks that I take messages for her even when she is in the office (because she's trying to finish written work so she doesn't want to be interrupted) whereas one of my other colleagues will interrupt his own meetings with other clients just to take a call. Everything is also constantly changing in my office ranging from new filing procedures to simply having new clients with different needs arise.

In addition to my job description described above I have also babysat, picked up dirty (and I meant dirty) toilet paper off the floor in the bathroom, managed the website and worked as a mover. 

The good news is that the people I work with are amazing. They come from all over the world and have more than a wealth of experience and stories to share. In fact one of my favorite parts of my job so far has been when each of my colleagues have taken quiet opportunities to tell me about their lives before and after they came to Canada. 

The best thing that has happened at work so far took place on January 16th. One of the 53 clients we received in December was a 17 year old boy from Afghanistan. When we found out his Birthday was January 16th, this bright young fellow who goes out of his way to help his mom (understatement of the year) told us that all he wanted was to have an opportunity to celebrate his Birthday for the first time. This was repeated several times and on January 16th, the boy's birthday, he showed up for our homework club and my supervisor decided our youth coordinator could buy him a cake. While the Youth Coordinator went out to by the cake I stayed and watched the homework club. Upon his return we lit the candles and brought all of the homework club participants into the room. I will never forget the look of giddy disbelief on the boy's face when we brought the cake into the room. Truly amazing.

What I've Been Doing Away From Work
Sometimes I'm lucky. In October my friend Adrian remotely put me in touch with someone from Engineers Without Borders here in Kitchener. After meeting for a coffee with Aatif I was a bit surprised to be invited to present at Waterloo's first Development Drinks discussing mineral exploitation and the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mineral exploitation in the DRC has received a relatively large amount of attention (at least as far as attention paid to the DRC in the media goes) because of the prevalence of a mineral called coltan which is used in cell phone batteries. It's extraction has continued to finance armed groups in the Eastern DRC who contribute to the continued misery of people already living in the country with the lowest Human Development Index in the World.

In general mineral exploitation has not been my area of focus. I do feel at times that the theme is used to over simplify the cause of conflict in the Eastern DRC and it's solutions, but boy was I happy to have an eager audience to discuss a conflict that I have dedicated several years of research and activism too. After my first presentation I had the opportunity to present at a shop day held by Engineers Without Borders where we brainstormed possible approaches that the organization might take to address the use of conflict minerals in electronics. 

The research and presentations I did as part of my EWB adventure transitioned nicely into working on Ph.D. applications which I submitted to the University of Ottawa and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, where I'm hoping to write a thesis considering how an understanding of the relationship between armed violence and development in the Eastern DRC can contribute to the development of effective development strategies which can be incorporated into a broader peace process. I mailed the applications off before Jan 14th. I guess we'll see what happens.

Naturally I spent Christmas with my family and went to Ottawa for New Years where I had a marvelous time. 

Here's a couple of pictures of my friends burying me in snow outside of parliament:

Where I hope I'm Going
 Yesterday I had an interview to be a Research Assistant for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. If I happen to get the job I will have to move to Winnipeg and start another new chapter in my life.

Of course then there's the Ph.D. applications, at least one of which I am really hoping gets accepted (at this time I'm not really partial to which one). 

If neither of those things work out I plan to apply to other human rights related jobs in Canada and abroad.

If all else fails I'm moving back to Ottawa. I've also discussed with several people the possibility of becoming a youtube sensation as a Rapperina, which is exactly what it sounds like.

When You'll Hear From Me Next 

Hopefully soon now that I've stopped freaking out about PhD apps. I was thinking I might write something more thorough about the DRC, about refugees and maybe even about dancing.