Cowichan Valley International Women's Day Rally and Festival

Five year plan/intention – Written in Feb 2017

March 8^th, will be the focal point of a week long festival that will include a rally on the Saturday prior to March 8 (assuming the 8^th falls on any other day of the week than Saturday) and a revived potluck that bonds the participants, held at the House of Friendship.

The rest of March would see a variety of institutions programming their regular events around the IWD theme of the year.

This will be led by the IWD committee, which will have a 10 member leadership team, and a minimum 100 women paid membership, of which there would be 30+ activists representing a diverse range of voices.

The specific tasks of the IWD Committee would be to organize a handful of anchor events such as the rally on a Saturday, and a speakers event on March 8, to prepare a brochure/booklet supporting the events related to IWD, and to coordinate advertising and promotion of the events as a whole, as a means of advancing the goals of the IWD theme.

The further role of the IWD Committee would be to provide encouragement to other local institutions to participate by shaping their March programming around the IWD theme, particularly, but not exclusively, in the week surrounding March 8.

We would reach out with the theme of the year, help brainstorm ideas, publish their participation in our well-distributed brochure, in our well-placed ads and media spots, and feature them in our PR.

The IWD Committee will include significant participation from local First Nations, and residents from a wide variety of other backgrounds and interests, bound together in the common purpose of advancing women’s rights and issues. Both leadership and activists will include both elders and youth, and the various events will draw 100s of women from across the region, including from Victoria and Nanaimo, but mostly from the Cowichan Valley.

Events will include everything from the rally advancing locally important women’s issues, to films, book readings, public speakers, sporting events, musical performers, demonstrations of traditional skills and lessons for the same, and non-traditional work job fairs/training sessions.

March 8 would feature a woman speaker of note…whose speech would be not about IWD, but about her important work in some area that matters deeply to our times and to our region.

Performances by significant women artists would be programmed at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre, The Firehouse, the VIRL branches, the USW Heritage Hall, and the Duncan Showroom, as well as other regional spaces such as The Hub and the Farmer’s Institute, readings by women authors at bookstores and the library, films by and/or about powerful women and girls at the Caprice and the library.

The local media would be primed to anticipate the month’s events…it would be already in their annual calendar even before our press releases are sent out.

feminist@cowichanvalleyiwd.com