Women's Program Funding in Action
Check Your Head: Youth Global Education Network

With the goal of engaging youth in leadership roles to prevent violence against girls and women, Check Your Head (CYH) presented its workshop, Gender Representations: Women and the Media 52 times to more than 1,500 high school students and their teachers in the northern and lower mainland parts of BC. Workshop participants came away with a greater understanding of how the media’s stereotyping, negative messaging and systemic gender biases promote violence against women and girls. Project funding also supported development of an excellent peer facilitator training component and a highly successful mentorship component. Participants point to them as life-changing experiences.

“The power of this project was not only in contributing to a generation of youth who are able and willing to challenge stereotypes and prevent violence. The project also created a unique sense of community in our volunteer facilitators, many of whom told me they hadn't felt a sense of belonging in Vancouver before! "Watching these young people grow and learn not only from their mentors and leaders but more importantly from one another was inspiring; watching them engage hundreds of their peers across the province in preventing violence gave us hope for the future.”