Pictou County Women’s Centre

 1976 – 2004

"Herstory"

 It is hard to believe it was that many years ago when a group of local women started to meet, talk, and share about issues in their daily lives. In the early to mid 70's these groups were referred to as Consciousness Raising (CR) Groups. At the same time women across the country and around the world were doing the same thing, and it soon moved into organizing shelters and other services for women, ensuring that the second wave of feminism was not to be a small blip in the herstory of women’s struggle for equality.

We are grateful for the foresight and determination of the first members of the Women’s Centre Collective who did so much with so little.

From the very early years the Women’s Centre and Planned Parenthood Pictou County have had a symbiotic relationship, sharing the same space and resources. The first few years focused on Women’s Health issues and the first of many Well Women’s Clinics were organized. During the same period Lamaze and Parenting programs were also offered, development of school curriculum for delivering sex education, and surveying the community on how to best deliver sex education were carried out.

The Centre was also an important forum for women to develop their analysis around their issues and discuss the necessity of other services that, up to the early 1980’s, were very limited. One of the first issues that women in Pictou County and across the country started to make visible was the horrendous social problem called Violence Against Women. The Centre took on the work of establishing a battered women's shelter and in October of 1984 Tearmann House opened its doors. A series of public discussions on pornography and its negative impact on women’s equality was developed and carried out at about the same time.

The Centre stayed focused on other issues in women’s lives and offered programs on stress, self-esteem, and other health issues. From 1985-87 the Women’s Health Project offered many programs throughout the county. One of the outcomes of that project was the need for services for chemically dependent women.

The issue of Sexual Violence also became a major focus during this time, volunteers were trained and a 24 hour crisis line, called the Rape-Line, was established and run by volunteers for the next two years. A Conference on Sexual Violence was organized and many school/ public presentations were delivered on the topic. It was also during this period that the Women’s Centre started to define it’s politics and take public stands on feminism, abortion, gay rights and developed a mission statement to clarify where it stood on important equality issues.

Into the mid to late 1980’s the Centre made poverty and housing issues a focus and assisted low-income women in understanding the feminization of poverty and the legislation that dictated their lives. The centre assisted them in forming their own group called “Taking Control, Making Changes”. They in turn assisted in getting Kid's First: Family Resource Centre established.

The Centre also worked with agencies and women to establish Second Stage Housing units and a community board to govern it. In 1988 the four established Women’s Centre (there are now eight) in the province came together and formed an association called Connect! Working together over that time has enabled us to secure operation funding to carry out our mandates.

The needs of chemically dependent women still needed to be addressed and between 1989 – 1992 the Centre worked with them in forming a group called “Women in Active Recovery”. The Centre and the group hosted a conference on Women & Chemical Dependence and developed a resource called “Sharing Our Strengths” to assist other women in forming a woman-centered recovery group.

The issue of Violence Against Women has always been central to the work and in 1989 carried out some more educational work on pornography and it’s consequences. The other piece of research that was carried out at the same time examined the issue of childcare. Out of this work a community-based service called Family Home Childcare was established. AIDS become a primary focus for some of the Collective members during the late 1980's, out of which the Pictou County AIDS Coalition was formed. The coalition worked to expand public understanding of the issue and offer individual support.

In the early 1990’s project staff were examining women’s work & pay equity. A video called “Jacqueline of All Trades” was produced, which focused on the women in Pictou County who worked at the Pictou Shipyard and Gunnery during World War Two. Information sessions on the new provincial pay equity legislation were also carried out. Our Herstory up to 1992 was researched and compiled into a booklet. At about the same time the issue of sexism in the school system was examined.

Up to this point in our Herstory the Centre had never received any operational funding and existed from project to project, with project workers carrying out the work within the project, as well as taking care of the everyday operations and services of the Centre. In 1993 we received our first financial provincial contribution ($16,000.00) to support the services we offer women in our community. Over the rest of the decade our efforts to receive adequate funding, to meet the demands for our service, continued primarily through our association Connect!. We now have operational funding to support long-term staff and program deliver. Being able to offer consistent programming and services was key to women and the larger community using the Centre like never before.

The operational funding continued a gradual increase to $55,000. where it stayed until 2000. The issue of Sexual Violence, and services for women who are victims, was a gap in services in the community. We pulled the community together to examine this issue and look at how to improve our response. We offered community-based agency workers a training program and worked with survivors of sexual violence to deliver a sensitivity workshop to professional and support workers in the community.

Between 1993-1996 we were able to deliver self-esteem and smoking cessation programs to women and offer young women their own Health Forums. In the same time period we worked with a group of women to increase their abilities to take more leadership roles in the community, and ensure that women’s voices were at the table.

In 1997 we carried out work on Women and Economic Development to find solutions to women’s economic independence. This led to working with other agencies to offer a re-entry program and job placement opportunities under the Federal/ Provincial Agreement called the Labour Market Development Agreement (LMDA). Between 1998/1999 we again worked with low-income women so they could understand public policy, and use their knowledge to challenge and strengthen public policy so barriers to their economic independence were removed. This Provincial initiative called "Women in Transition"(WIT) was carried out through all the Women's Centres in the province, as we tried to influence the new provincial social assistance policy that was coming into effect in 2000.

Another project that came out of the Women & Economic Development was working with a group of women who wanted to set up their own businesses. Our work with young women continued and we organized Girl Power camps and a conference called “Girl Talk”. In 1998 we were able to access project funds to work with young women at risk and, since then, have continued to offer personal empowerment programs for young women.

From that time we have worked with the larger community to form a Youth Agencies Committee and continue to develop a community-based service called Youth Access. We also partnered with Planned Parenthood in carrying out a peer education project on AIDS, with senior high and junior high students developing a dialogue on the subject through the use of theatre. Between 1998 – 2000, under the Connect umbrella, we worked with representatives from the 5 major government departments to carry out an extensive review of the work women’s centres are undertaking with the expectation that our funding could be increased. The document was called the "Planning Report". While undertaking this process we were given an increase to hire staff so the Executive Director’s could engage in this process and additional documentation could be carried out.

In 2000, with a provincial election in the works and the sitting party committing additional funding to women’s centres we garnered support from all the parties. At that point our funding increased to $100,000. This has allowed us to have one full time support worker as well as a Director and Bookkeeper.

In 2001 we worked with the African United Baptist Association (AUBA) Women's Institute to house a provincial project they were working on that had to do with Violence Against Women in the Black Communities & how our communities are responding. Beginning in 2002 we developed and delivered many Work Re-Entry/ Job Readiness programs to women across the county, including one specifically in the 1st Nation’s and Black Communities. The beginning programs were 8 weeks and as the program expanded and was further developed it has become an 18 week program. We also developed the program into a manual we call "Starting Point", which we also put on CD for distribution.

With the many successes we have had in assisting women in getting in the workforce, developing their education and career goals that have lead to their economic independence, we have had many challenges in maintaining secure & adequate funding for the program. In the Fall of 2004 we have been able to secure only 6 months of funding for another 18 week program.

In 2002, in partnership with two other women centres (Antigonish & Sydney) we carried out some community based research on the new social assistance policy to see how if is affecting women and how it needs to be enhanced so women are not further disadvantaged. We were able to continue that into a second project that looked specifically at the Employment Support side of the policy. This project was completed in the fall of 2004. We are putting forward another proposal to move our recommendations forward and research the concept of “Guaranteed Living Income” that would replace the institutionalized poverty that now currently exists.

In 2002 we applied and secured some funding from the United Way of Pictou County as we continue to need additional staffing to assist with our Direct Services and program requests. We secured additional funding under the Office of Economic Development, starting in January 2004 for one year, to assist us with the services we deliver under our “Direct Service” mandate as well as carry out some programs on Business Development for women in the community. These have proven to be very popular and we hope to be able to secure additional to continue.

One of the areas that we have found that limits women’s options is the issue of affordable housing. We applied to Health Canada, Population Health Fund, to carry out some community based research and development. This project started in the Fall of 2004 and will continue into March 2005. We applied to Health Canada, under their Diabetics Strategy, to work with women and the general population in the Black community on the issue of diabetes, incorporating an educational approach to address both prevention and intervention.

In 2004 Planned Parenthood Pictou County that was under the direction of the Women’s Centre Collective since 1985, formed its own Board of Directors. It is still housed at the centre and we continue to have a symbiotic relationship as we support each others' work. Maintaining an up-to-date library has always been a priority of the Women’s Centre. In 1994 we named it the Joanne Kohout Memorial Library, in memory of Joanne, who was a dedicated member of the collective and committed to world equality and peace.

The Centre is also the central point for organizing Women’s Wellness Clinics, International Women’s Day celebrations, Women’s History Month, our local National Day of Remembrance on Violence Against Women, and in 2000, local World March of Women events. A group of 10 women associated with the centre went to Montreal & Ottawa to be part of the National events associated with the World March.

Being involved with other equality seeking women’s organizations across Nova Scotia and the country is vital to our work. We were part of the formation of the Women’s Action Coalition of NS and the present coalition called Feminists for Just & Equitable Public Policy (FemJEPP). We have been a member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) for many years. We were also partners with a group of feminists’ activists, called Women Leading Action (WLA), in examining the new provincial Framework for Action Against Family Violence.

Out of that the WLA developed a resource called "Sharing the Talk, Sharing the Work: Coordinating Community Action on Violence Against Women". Locally, being an active member on the "Interagency Committee on Family Violence" and working in partnership with other agencies has been vital to our accomplishments and strengthened all of us.

Over these last 29 years the Women’s Centre has continued to carry out it’s two mandates: Direct Service & Social Change. The Direct Service work of offering women and adolescent girls support counseling, advocacy, information, and referrals as well as programs such as “Self Esteem” has been the cornerstone of our work with women in our community.

Much of our herstory is captured in projects, which reflect our commitment to social change. Women’s equality has made some advancement since the inception of the Women's Centre and the Women’s Centre has been central to that struggle in this community and in this province.