LAWC marks 22 years of its International Women’s Day Breakfast

The London Abused Women’s Centre surpassed its goal for its International Women’s Day Breakfast, raising over $60,000 for women and girls in need, Friday morning.

Co-host of the event, FM96’s Andrea Dunn, told viewers that the virtual format, brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, has allowed organizers to connect with people across Canada and globally.

The 22nd annual breakfast is the centre’s largest fundraising event, with the proceeds going to front line-services for abused, trafficked, and harassed women and girls.

“It’s truly so important that women and girls receive access to services even during the times of a pandemic. Women should not have to wait to get the support they need to move through what they are going through,” said Jennifer Dunn, executive director of LAWC.

During the last fiscal year, LAWC supported over 3,800 women and girls through counselling and daily support.

The centre answered over 5,000 phone calls during this time and helped over 800 women and girls who were trafficked or at risk of being trafficked with access to services.

This year was Dunn’s first breakfast as executive director since taking over after Megan Walker retired last year.

The virtual format also allowed organizers to expand the breakfast’s reach, connecting with this year’s keynote speaker in Vancouver over video chat.

The hour-long event featured Keynote speaker, Indigenous artist, and activist Cherry Smiley.

She has worked as an anti-violence worker in a rape crisis centre and transition house for battered women and their children, as the assistant coordinator for a drop-in anti-violence group for Indigenous girls, and as a project manager for a national native women’s organization.

Smiley, whose work focuses on sexualized male violence against Indigenous women and girls, has won several awards, including the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Person’s Case (Youth).

Speaking to the virtual crowd during Friday’s Breakfast, Smiley focused on the topic of “decolonizing feminist theory.”

“The dominant understanding of colonization in Canada is related to Indigenous people, it’s related to Indigenous land, and looks at the impact white men have had on Indigenous peoples in Canada. It has only been recently that we have paid some attention to the fact that the impacts of colonization are different for Indigenous women than they are for Indigenous men,” Smiley said.

“The problem with this presents women and girls as an afterthought, and that’s just not good enough for Indigenous women and girls to be an afterthought, or to be a footnote or an add-on.”

Smiley spoke about the need to look at colonization as primarily sex-based instead of race-based to see how women and girls are disproportionately impacted by it.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada estimates that while Indigenous women and girls only make up a small portion of the overall population, they represent roughly 50 per pert of all women and girls who are trafficked.

Friday’s event also saw an online auction with items, including concert tickets to see Justin Bieber and a WestJet round trip flight for two.