Regional Women’s Committee Minutes – Annual General Meeting– April 23, 2018
In Attendance:
Tabassom Javadi Doudarani UNE 30040
Deb Kosteniuk UTE 30024
Jennifer Jurca UCTE 30318
Kirsten Strachey UTE 30024
Karen Knull CEIU 30858
Vicky Norris UTE 30024
Dolly Ablitt – PSAC Representative
Regrets:
Arliss Chute USGE 30129
1. The Meeting was called to order at 5:48 p.m.
Agenda approval: Deb amended the agenda to add #3: Bear Witness Day, May 10, Vicky seconds. Jenn moves to accept the amended agenda, Karen seconds. All in favour.
Minutes from previous meeting: Apr 05, 2018 were approved. Deb moves, Jenn seconds.
2. Old Business:
a) PSAC Triennial Convention: April 29-May 4. Our resolution did not make the top 10, and due to some other contentious resolutions being within the top 10, we don’t believe that ours will make it to the floor. We had discussed doing stickers, but once we did our homework, the costs were deemed to be prohibitive. Kirsten will discuss it with delegates instead, and discuss within caucus. We can take the money we had budgeted for this and use it towards another RWC endeavour. We are planning to send an email to the locals, to inform them about the resolution we sent to convention to raise delegate awareness, as well as inform them about Bear Witness Day upcoming on May 10. Deb to do this.
The website has a Triennial Convention App which you can download.
b) Scotiabank Marathon Charity Challenge: May 24-27. Our team will be the PSAC Sole Sisters, and we will be running for the Women’s Centre of Calgary. Vicky has volunteered to captain the team. Vicky will register the team and then members can join the team when they register. Call out for 4 people: Melisa and Tabassom have expressed interest in joining. RWC will pay the entrance fee for us to do the 5km charity run, we need to have the team established by May 8. Deb to send out the poster. Can we get team headbands? Or baseball caps? Vicky to contact the Women’s Centre and ask.
c) Walking With Our Sisters: April 29-May 14. This is an art project to honour the lives of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. They need volunteers for installation, tear down, and as tour guides. Check out www.wwoscalgary.ca for details. You don’t need to be aboriginal and for some of the positions, you don’t require all of the volunteer training. Deb sent an email blast to the locals for participation.
d) Bear Witness Day
We were wondering about setting up a display table/info session in the foyer of Harry Hayes building for May 10th as the cabinets are gone. We can have people do selfies with the bears and then do a draw at the end to give them away. We could do a promo like the one we did with the Dilly Bars. We want to dress the bears: a metis sash, a clip on feather, a necklace etc. Vicky and Deb to talk to arrange the bears, we need volunteers for the table. Deb will talk to Josie about volunteering. We will get some info sheet pamphlets printed so if locals request them, we can mail them out to them.
The request for the space goes to CRA now, not the building.
There may be some difficulty in getting approval to use Union Time though, as some members have recently experienced this.
3. Review of Financial Information:
a) 2017 Financials review: Tabassom reviewed the numbers:
- Bank Balance at December 31, 2017 - $1498.58
- Revenue from Prairie Region Allocation - $4300.00
- Total Expenses - $2870.60
b) 2018 Budget Allocation request: Deb discussed that this is based on:
- The Number of meetings; budgeted for 9 meetings with 7 to 8 attendees. (Lately we’ve had 5-6) ($675)
- Conference calls for the meetings ($225)
- Travel honorarium for travel to AGM ($75)
- Loss of Salary ($280)
- Meeting Materials ($100)
- Donation to Awo T’aan Healing Lodge for Sisters in Spirit Vigil ($1000)
- IWD prizes, gifts, and honorarium in Calgary ($950)
- IWD prizes and gifts in Red Deer ($75)
- Lobbying supplies for National Triennial for Jordan’s Principle ($700)
- Scotiabank Marathon Registration and team swag ($450)
- Union Sister Movie Nights (Norma Rae, Indian Horse, Pride etc) ($300)
- Sisters in Spirit lunch bag swag ($250)
- National Day of Remembrance event ($150)
- Bank Charges ($23.40)
Projected expenses $5223.40, Balance Available $1498.58, Total Budget request $3754.82
We discussed amending the budget to use some of the money we were looking at for lobbying to buy a button maker instead. Also, this didn’t include any funds towards Jordan’s principle, so we could fit this in.
Our current bank balance is $1634.76 at April 6, minus a $750 O/S cheque to Awo T’aan.
4. Oral Executive Reports:
Deb: Provided a written report. See attached.
Tabassom: She does the numbers, and we did some great events with our money this year: IWD, the Women’s Place is in Her Union Retreat and the Grand Opening. She thanks you for your support.
Jenn: Is doing the minutes, and the process has changed. Is this working for everyone? Yes. Are they sufficiently detailed? Yes. She really enjoyed participating in the IWD and retreat this past year.
5. Elections:
Dolly led the elections:
- Chair: Tabassom nominated Deb, Vicky seconded. Deb accepted and was acclaimed.
- Treasurer: Jenn nominated Tabassom, Deb seconded. Tabassom accepted and was acclaimed.
- Secretary: Kirsten nominated Jenn, Vicky seconded. Jenn accepted and was acclaimed.
6. Roundtable:
Karen – nothing to add
Kirsten – She will be thinking of us this week while meeting with sisters from across Canada and will mention our childcare campaign.
Tabassom – nothing to add
Vicky – nothing to add
Jenn – Thanks to everyone for being superstars and being an awesome team.
Deb – nothing to add
Dolly – Unionism on Turtle Island course was postponed to November. (We didn’t like the Hotel Alma, where our last course was) FB and Parks votes are both done, so we are all going back to bargaining again soon. What can we do to put a gender lens onto the proposals? Expansion of definition of family for bereavement leave? Or change to terms for bereavement leave? Orange T-shirt day, Sept 30.
7. Meeting adjourned at 7:28
Next Meeting: Monday, May 28
Report of the Chair for 2017
2017 saw us celebrate IWD at The Women’s Centre of Calgary. Tabassom created incredible edible wheel prizes that were a big hit with the women who won them. We had some swag items, and UFCW contributed some too, so that together with the gift cards, we had plenty to hand out when someone got their wheel question correct.
The Prairie Region Triennial was in April 2017. Your chair was elected the Women’s Committee Representative during the Triennial. I am excited to have the opportunity to work with all the committees in the Prairie Region and will be seeking input on a project that all committees could do as a show of solidarity. If you have an idea, let me know. We saw some very strong resolutions come from Prairie RWC’s at the Triennial – those of us who are delegates to National Triennial will have to let the rest of us know how those resolutions fared. Our resolution on Jordan’s Principle and Bear Witness Day did not make the top 10 priority resolutions – I think we are number 27. So it may not make it to the floor for discussion/debate/passing at the 2018 National Trienni
We were at the Aboriginal Day celebrations at the Stampede Grounds on June 21st - manning the PSAC booth. We talked to a lot of people about Jordan’s Principle and clean drinking water. This event is a great success with hundreds in attendance.
We made our usual donation to Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society, helping them to continue to offer bagged lunches to all the Sister in Spirit Vigil participants. Each year the amount of bagged lunches increase and still some go away hungry.
In November we participated in A Sister’s Place is In Her Union Retreat. In addition to the excellent PSAC course, we had a workshop that covered violence against women and murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. We were honoured to have our national president Robyn Benson and our REVP Marianne Hladun as guest speakers on the Sunday.
We have some great ideas for 2018 and I cannot wait to put some of them in motion!