When Roxanne Akhtar moved to Ottawa this past year from Montreal, she was surprised to find how unwelcome she felt in comparison to her home town. She sensed she was being looked at differently. Not only for being a lesbian but for also being a Muslim and a feminist.
The 28-year-old moved to attend Algonquin for police foundations after working as a security guard for six years.
This uncomfortable feeling was what drew her to the SA Community Project, a partnership with the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women, during Consent Fest on Feb. 2-3. The project aimed to create a social media engagement plan for St. Patrick’s Day.
“I wanted to help build awareness around an issue not much talked about, unlike homosexuality,” said Akhtar in an interview with the Times after Consent Fest. “That awareness is violence against women. The more we talk about it and build awareness to the issue, than violence will decrease in the world.”
OCEVAW aims to inform the public about opportunities to help prevent sexual assaults this coming St. Patrick’s Day.
“With St. Patrick’s Day celebrations just around the corner, we want to encourage everyone in the community to play a role in preventing violence against women,” said Erin Leigh, Executive Director of the OCEVAW. “It is the community’s role to help prevent violence from happening, not an individual woman’s role to stay safe.”
“The reason I volunteered was to help the college and Ottawa create change so that maybe next year I will feel more like it’s 2016,” said Akhtar.
A fall 2014 study conducted by The Ottawa Hospital Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program, found that of 204 new cases of sexual assault reported to The Ottawa Hospital in 2013, 25 per cent of these occurred at festivals, parties and other group events, known as mass gatherings, such as St. Patrick’s Day.
“The study revealed that the highest incidence of sexual assaults associated with group events where alcohol and drug consumption is common coincided with New Year’s Eve, Canada Day, University Frosh Week and Halloween celebrations,” stated Dr. Kari Sampsel, Medical Director of The Ottawa Hospital Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program. “It also found that 90 per cent of victims consumed alcohol at mass gatherings – compared to 60 per cent in other settings.”
Algonquin does not want to stay silent on the issue. During the community project, students created several memes and drafts of tweets that will be posted during the days leading up to St. Patrick’s Day in the hopes of raising awareness and creating a dialogue centered around the issue.
“We’ll retweet their posts if they post on St. Patrick’s Day, as we did in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day and we’ll likely highlight harm reduction via the Umbrella Project with a post or two on social media on St. Patty’s Day,” said Misa Mendes-Kobayashi, web and communications editor for the AC Hub.
“I will always dream of the day when the world will live in peace and equality free from hate a racism,” said Akhtar. “But in order for that to happen we must educate the world and build awareness to the young and old because it is knowledge that creates change not hate.”