The Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters, along with the Grande Prairie and Area Family Violence Network are working together to bring a new workshop about harmful gender based stereotypes to our city.
The first Playing to Win workshops will be taking place in November.
Wendy Dyck, Public Education Coordinator for the Odyssey House, says the goal is to provide youth mentors with the knowledge and support to educate others.
“It helps so that you can feel comfortable and confident in being able to talk to kids about why this is an issue, why does it matter if you make a joke and there’s no other women around, what does it matter if you catcall a girl. It helps them to be able to talk to young men and women about that sort of thing.”
The Family Violence Network is supporting and funding the program, and educators from a number of different community organizations will be facilitating workshops.
Dyck is one of those educators, she says the Playing to Win project was initially created to target youth sports groups.
“So this idea of playing to win is the idea that winning at any cost is okay, but we’d like to redefine what it means to really win, and what’s important about winning. So it started off with this idea around targeting sports groups, but when Grande Prairie adopted the initiative, we really wanted to make it wider.”
Four workshops are currently scheduled, but Dyck says anyone interested in scheduling one for their workplace or organization is free to do so.
There are more than 20 facilitators trained to offer the workshop here in Grande Prairie, and in Peace River and High Prairie.