Consent Awareness Week
Consent Awareness Week
Did you know that less than half of people in Canada fully understand what it means to give consent?
In 2019, I worked with the Courage to Act Foundation, Possibility Seeds, and the High School to establish National Consent Awareness Week with the community, school and government partners nationwide. It runs annually during the third week of September. We chose September because the first 6 weeks of school are designated the Red Zone when there is a significant increase in sexual violence at post-secondary schools. But Consent Awareness Week goes beyond campuses, inviting everyone to have thoughtful, affirming, intersectional and age-appropriate conversations about consent as a cornerstone of all relationships, not just intimate ones.
Consent Awareness Week is partly inspired by a project I created at the Ontario University Sexual Violence Network in 2015. Collaborating with my peers, we organized events at schools across Ontario during the last week of January to raise awareness about consent on our campus. We called it Consent Action Week. In that first year, a few of us led the effort, and now, nearly a decade later, it's amazing to see how it’s become a nationwide movement. Post-secondary school sexual violence offices across the province actively participate by hosting events and championing consent as a core value in all relationships. This growth highlights the collective commitment to creating safer, more respectful spaces and fostering lasting cultural change around consent.