Accessing Training
For your agency:
We will come to your agency, organization or institution and provide free training, including access to the free FMP Service Provider Training Toolkits (SPT), to everyone who participates. If your agency deals specifically with certain clients, e.g. women, LGBTQ community, persons with disabilities, etc., we will provide customized training that concentrates on the needs of your clientele while making all participants aware of the broader issues.
About the Workshops
Introduction to Forced Marriage
In this workshop participants will learn about the different types of forced marriage, the difference between an arranged and a forced marriage, as well as hear a survivor’s story in her own words. They will also engage in activities to assist them in working with survivors and
those at risk.
Working with Parents
Using videos and interactive games, participants will learn different methods and strategies for engaging parents and helping them to understand Canadian law, The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with more productive methods of dealing with their teenage and adult children.
Engaging Youth
This workshop focuses on strategies and resources for engaging youth at risk of forced marriage, and assisting them in seeking help, and in discussing issues of consent, coercion, dating, violence, and marriage. Using videos and group activities, youth workers will have the opportunity of not only understanding the issues involved, but of trying out some of the tools before using them in their work.
Intervention in Cases of Forced Marriage
Service providers will learn the different strategies and methods for intervening in cases of forced marriage without putting themselves or their clients at risk. This workshop will use case studies, role playing and information gathering exercises as well as videos and real life cases. Learn what to do if a client is taken abroad to be forced into a marriage, and what to do if the forced marriage is taking place in Canada.
Upon completion of all four workshops, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion as well as access to the FMP Service Provider Toolkits (SPT), full of resources to support you in your work.
About the Workshop Facilitator
Shirley Gillett is a founding member of Women Won’t Forget, a grassroots collective committed to ending violence against women, for which she was awarded the Cressy Leadership Award in 2000. A survivor of sexual violence herself, she has long been committed to including the voices of survivors in work to eradicate gender violence. After seeing the effects of forced marriage on two friends and confronting the agencies and organizations that seemed unable or unwilling to address this problem, she began to educate herself and to seek out opportunities to create programs that would work with survivors and those at risk of forced marriage. In 2010 she became the Forced Marriage Project (FMP) Coordinator at Agincourt Community Services Assoc. (ACSA) where she has initiated programs to introduce the issue of forced marriage to ESL students at the Toronto District School Board; to conduct service provider training on forced marriage for agencies across the GTA; and to create a national website to reach all Canadians with resources and information about forced marriage. She is also a member of the Network of Agencies Against Forced Marriage (NAAFM)
Please contact us about “Service Provider Training” at: shirley.gillett@utoronto.ca