The Raise Your Voice project, headed by WRDA alongside Reclaim the Agenda, WSN and NIRWN, continues to bring motions around misogyny to Councils across Northern Ireland. We hope that, as part of the Hate Crime Legislation Review, we will soon see misogyny recognised as a category of hate crime in Northern Ireland. The purpose of these motions is to call on Councils to support this aim, and to support our project which continues to deliver workshops and to lobby on issues around sexual harassment and violence.
So far, this motion has passed in Belfast City Council, Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council, and Ards & North Down Borough Council. It has been on the agenda for some time at Fermanagh & Omagh District Council also, and we hope it will be heard there at the next Council meeting. We are working on bringing this motion to all the Councils in Northern Ireland, and we are encouraging people to email their Councillors and ask them to sponsor this motion.
Part of our motion involves asking Councils to support our project, and as a result we have provided hundreds of posters that will now appear in Council properties and leisure centres across the relevant boroughs.
We have planned more workshops for later in September, as well as October and November. The workshops work as a pair or as standalone workshops; one is called Let’s Talk About Sexual Harassment and the other is called Want to Know More About Consent? These are accessible to all, completely free and you can register for the former here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lets-talk-about-sexual-harassment-tickets-120210100647 and for the latter here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/want-to-know-more-about-consent-tickets-120240082323
We will also be delivering workshops to groups that want dedicated training, including to Queen’s University Students’ Union as part of Fresher’s Week.
Raise Your Voice also has a new e-zine that will allow you to sign up to receive updates in your inbox, you can read our first edition and sign up here: https://www.raiseyourvoice.community/ezine
