Victoria Native Friendship Centre

Published purpose

This 29-month project will support a feminist response and recovery to address the current impacts of COVID-19, through systemic change. Victoria Native Friendship Centre will achieve this by addressing systemic racism and misogyny within South Vancouver Island healthcare by developing an Indigenous Safety in Healthcare Advisory Committee, hiring a cultural safety facilitator to support Indigenous women and girls through the Women’s Health Empowerment Circles, and develop and deliver cultural safety training for Indigenous and non-Indigenous healthcare workers. At the end of the project, the organization will have contributed to addressing systemic barriers by advancing inclusive policies and practices, encouraging more equitable and effective sharing of resources, addressing persistent harmful gender norms and attitudes, supporting positive distribution of authority, voices, and decision-making power, and increasing networks and collaboration to accelerate systemic change. The project will result in 12 Cultural Safety Training sessions delivered to healthcare workers and 15 Women’s Health Empowerment Circles for Indigenous women and girls. Statistics will be collected to inform policy and practice change documents that will improve Indigenous women’s experience of healthcare on South Vancouver Island overall. Partner agencies will assist in building networks, communication of project and recruitment of staff for training. Supplemental funding in January 2024 will be used to hire and fully train Cultural Safety Training facilitators, sustainability facilitators and a marketing consultant.