KSA and WOOW Move Ahead with On-Campus Women’s Centre

The centre is expected to be opened in January

For the past several months, feminist group Women Organizing Opportunities for Women and the Kwantlen Student Association have been busy laying down the groundwork for KPU’s new women’s centre. The centre will be housed in the renovated Birch building on the Surrey campus and is expected to open in January. It will aim to provide a safe space and other services to female-identifying students on campus.

“We’re currently figuring out what kind of resources we want to have in the women’s centre, what kind of community resources we want to advocate on behalf of,” says Natasha Lopes, vice-president student life and women’s representative for the KSA.

According to Lopes, biweekly meetings between WOOW organizers and other interested parties have been key to ensuring the smooth establishment of the women’s centre. Items on the agenda for these meetings have included event planning, the look and feel of the centre, branding, and how to get the word out. Organizers are planning workshops on topics such as the meaning of feminism, double standard awareness, consent training, and learning how to create safe spaces. Lopes says these workshops are ideal for anyone who wants to be more aware of women’s issues.

“I found that, in the first couple of meetings, we didn’t have too many people. Now it’s slowly getting better with more people becoming aware of the works that we’re currently doing,” says Lopes.

An educational campaign on consent will be one of the centre’s first big initiatives. For it, Lopes and other WOOW members have been working on drafting a “white paper” that would explain what consent is, what it means, and what it looks like.

Which roles and positions will be needed to staff the women’s centre has been another focus at WOOW meetings. All staff at the centre will be volunteers personally trained by Lopes. These positions will be unpaid, but Lopes says that volunteers will learn valuable skills and that their volunteer hours will be registered.

“I hope that anybody looking to be a part of the community that we want to create on campus and to grow a safe community comes to us,” say’s Lopes. “I’d love to have them.”

As part of the process of setting up the women’s centre, WOOW organizers have been consulting with representatives from SFU’s women’s centre, using the establishment as a benchmark. The SFU centre offers many of the same services that the KPU one will have, including a library of social justice reading material, a lounge area, and resources such as free feminine products.

To learn from the staff at SFU, Lopes and other WOOW members met with SFU Women’s Centre Coordinator Leah Horlick.

“It’s important for us to provide services for folks who experience different barriers,” says Horlick. “It’s really clear that women, and in particular women of colour, have always faced different barriers and different needs at university.”

According to Horlick, the biggest challenges that KPU’s women’s centre can expect to face—based off her experience at SFU’s centre—include dealing with the sheer volume of students taking advantage of these services causing a drain on resources, correcting misconceptions that students might have about what a women’s centre does, and staying accessible to students with various different needs. Horlick’s advice for WOOW is for their volunteers to see to their own needs as they strive to help their fellow students.

“I try to reinforce this for anyone involved in activism of any kind and any kind of outreach work. You can’t support other people if you haven’t supported yourself first,” says Horlick. “You need to give back to yourself as much as you give back to the community.”