UPDATE: March 8, 2018 –
We’re so excited to let you know that Green Party MLA for Cowichan Valley Sonia Furstenau will be presenting our petition at the BC Legislature today! Stay tuned for more updates!

On February 20, the BC government announced their new budget. We were heartened to see increases in spending on housing, childcare, and counselling for violence against women programming in the new BC Budget. However, this is different than core funding. This is project funding, and it is an unreliable and unstable way to fund organizations.

In 2004, BC’s Liberal Government cut 100% of the $1.7 million that had been allotted to BC’s women-serving organizations. Core funding pays for rent, electricity, and operational costs.  These cuts led to the closure of over half of the province’s women-serving organizations.

For us, a lack of core funding meant uncertainty about the future of our organization, and whether we’ll be able to keep our doors open. We had to spend a lot more money on operational costs. This led to what is now an 18-month waitlist for counselling services, and only one crisis line available for survivors to call 24 hours a day.

Not being able to access the support you need, when you need it, can be heartbreaking for a survivor. One of our community members shared their experience of not being able to connect with a support worker on our Crisis Line. In their own words:

I anxiously waited to hear a voice on the other end of the line. No one ever picked up. I tried calling a handful of times and each time, received the same message: someone was on the line and couldn’t take my call. It took so much energy, time, and preparation for me to even make the decision to dial WAVAW’s 24-hour crisis line. I was left isolated with my vicious thoughts on that Tuesday morning. I felt so alone.

We believe that survivors of sexualized violence should have the right to be able to access the support they need, when they need it.

But WAVAW is relatively lucky. We are still here, and we still provide services free of charge because our community believes survivors deserve access to healing. Services provided by women’s centres are critical, and the wait times survivors are met with is the responsibility of the provincial government. 

This is why WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre has launched this petition. In the wake of #MeToo, we are inviting our community to take action and turn #MeToo into #IWill.

Please sign this petition to urge John Horgan and the BC NDP to make real, tangible changes. We are calling on the provincial government to provide core funding to all antiviolence organizations in BC. The petition is open until March 7.

We will send this letter and the signatures we collect to Premier Horgan on March 8 – International Women’s Day.

Help WAVAW connect survivors to the healing they deserve. Sign the petition below today!

In Solidarity,

The WAVAW Team