Gender-Based Violence Prevention Program

Program Background

The SU is the official body representing all undergraduate students, and is concerned with overall student and campus safety and wellbeing.

To address the needs of students, the SU regularly makes efforts to identify emerging and ongoing areas of concerns. Most recently, issues related to gender and sexuality has been an area of focus, and lead to the creation of the new drop in service to address marginalization on the basis of gender and sexuality. The drop in space was created to help bridge a gap in space and service for individuals marginalized based on gender and/or sexual identity, and develop programs that could address gender based violence through education and awareness methodologies.

In September 2014, the Gender Based Violence Prevention Program (GBVPP) teamed up with The Students’ Union to help build community bridges with mainstream populations to elevate awareness and create spaces for learning and dialogue. GBVPP works with broader communities and mainstream populations, through targeted education and training, to increase the level of safety at the University of Alberta; and in the community, for individuals of all genders and sexualities. A large part of the learning within GBVPP is the unlearning of violent and abusive; yet normalized, values and language we maintain.

It is important to note that GBVPP focuses primarily on student and community leadership populations to unpack the sexism that exists within the gender binary constructs in order to get to the root of homophobia, transphobia and biphobia.