Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS)

Published purpose

This 25-month project will implement GBA+ ‘’Community Safety Audits’’ to address the root causes of gender-based violence for specific systemically marginalized populations. The Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS) will achieve this by examining how relationships, policies and practices operate within both informal and formal violence against women (VAW) and gender-based violence (GBV) support systems, in order to identify where systemic changes are needed. The audit process will be led by six existing Local Safety & Inclusion Solidarity Networks (LSISN) made up of Indigenous people, disability, and racialized migrant grassroots front-line workers - in Charlottetown, Saint John, Montréal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. At the end of the project, the organization will have contributed to addressing systemic barriers by identifying institutional gaps and needs of Indigenous people, racialized refugees, Black, African women, and people of diverse genders, with and without disabilities; advancing inclusive policies and practices; encouraging more equitable and effective sharing of resources; and increasing networks and supporting positive distribution of authority, voices, and decision-making power to accelerate systemic change to support women’s equality. The first step of the project will be to convene and embed these local networks in each of the sites, in order to build and sustain community-defined, city-specific, holistic gender-based violence prevention and response interventions that work towards the target groups’ long-term safety, health and economic security. Next, IRIS will support the local networks in bringing relevant local VAW/GBV organizations together to participate in the safety audit process. The goal is to identify institutional gaps, challenges and best practices. Recommendations will then be developed and incorporated into city-specific sustainability plan in order to implement community-wide changes towards the prevention and more effective response to structural violence experienced by these populations. An external project evaluation will also be led by an Indigenous evaluator. Lead community-based partners involved in this project are: PEI Association for Community Living (Charlottetown), Saint John Human Development Council (Saint John), Institut National pour l’Équité, l’Égalité et l’Inclusion (Montréal), Across Boundaries ( ethno-racial mental health centre, Toronto), Inclusion Winnipeg and Warriors Against Violence Society (Vancouver). Building on previous IRIS’ initiatives where systemically marginalized women and gender non-binary peoples worked on local community-identified interventions, the project will contribute to strengthen the network of frontline grassroots workers from these communities and ensure the continuity of prevention and response interventions for the target groups.