Contact:
Jennifer Marchbank, 778.782.7607, jmarchba@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca

Photos on Flickr

The Women’s Campaign School, a program created by the Canadian Women Voters Congress and held this year at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus, will help aspiring female politicians learn the tricks of their would-be trade.

The congress has assembled a well-known line up of faces to coach registrants in the $200 one-day workshop on Saturday, October 20. An opening reception the night before will give registrants a chance to mingle with the speakers who, during the workshop, will cover all things political, including the following:

• How to personally connect with the political process and the Canadian Women Voters Congress (CWVC);
• How to seek and secure a party’s nomination and get on the ballot;
• How to organize a team of election support volunteers;
• How to use social media to engage volunteers and voters; and
• How to create self-branding that respects party allegiance.

Among the speakers will be Jennifer Marchbank, an associate professor in SFU’s Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and in Explorations in Arts and Social Sciences. Marchbank is co-sponsoring the workshop.

Headlining the speakers’ list are the following current and former politicians: Adriane Carr, Linda Reid, Penny Priddy, Hedy Fry and Vicki Huntington. Carr, Huntington and Reid will share stories from the campaign trail about what they found most challenging, rewarding and easiest in their pursuit of a political career.

Created in 1999, the Women’s Campaign School is the longest-running school of its kind in Canada. The CWVC launched it with the intent of providing aspiring female politicians across Canada with training and mentorship that crosses and blurs party lines.

Through the school the CWVC seeks to remedy a demographic imbalance in the number of women pursuing politics in Canada. Canadian women make up more than 50 per cent of the country’s population but they hold only 21 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Only 27 per cent of MLAs in British Columbia are women.

Marchbank, who has doctorate in political science, says, “Political science research tells us that even today women are less likely than men to have access to the resources required to run for office. This campaign school provides networking and learning opportunities to assist women in overcoming such barriers.”

Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries.

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Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities.