Digital platform Upstander Online provides users the opportunity to confidently speak up
Saskatchewan continues to have the highest provincial rates of gender-based violence in Canada. As a step toward changing that, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) proudly launched Upstander Online, a digital program that addresses the need for preventative action and gives its users tools to confidently speak up instead of being a bystander on Mar. 3.
The training program allows teams, organizations, and businesses to recognize, interrupt, and prevent harmful, gender-based, or unsafe behavior.
Upstander Online
Megan Moore, YWCA’s senior director of community programs, says that part of ending the cycle of gender-based violence happens at the workplace and in community spaces.
“Too often people see something that feels wrong and hesitate,” she said. “They worry about saying the wrong thing and they question whether it’s their place. With that pause, the harm continues.”
For Moore, Upstander Online is about eliminating that pause by showing the participants how to safely intervene.
“When someone chooses to interrupt a harmful joke, when a manager can see the pattern to address instead of just ignoring it […] when a team member checks in rather than looking away, this is where prevention lies.”
The program has already existed prior to its digital inception but it limited YWCA’s reach to Regina and it wasn’t enough to support rural and northern communities. As an online program, Moore says it will better cover a vast demographic.
Upstander education coordinator, Olivia Gergely, says there are three streamlines dedicated to target different organizations such as Indigenous and Indigenous-serving communities, small to medium businesses and non-profits as well as large, corporate, and crown organizations.
Too often people see something that feels wrong and hesitate. They worry about saying the wrong thing and they question whether it’s their place, with that pause the harm continues.” – Megan Moore, senior director of community programs, YWCA
Safety in all spaces
At the launch event, pilot partners InspirED Sask and Nēwo-Yōtina Friendship Centre were invited to speak at the panel. For these pilot partners, having the online option for the program made it accessible and easy. InspirED Sask’s outreach lead, Amber Fink, says that bystander education is important in student leadership spaces.
“I think young people oftentimes are the easiest to kind of walk all over to some degree,” she said. “I think when you don’t know your rights […] a lot of the time that leads to some violence and conflict.”
Fink says it was reassuring to have resources that show what a safe workplace looks like and encourages other organizations to invest in the Upstander program.
Resolution health support worker, Ryan Smoke, from the Nēwo-Yōtina Friendship Centre says that the 5 D’s approach is what stood out to him in his Upstander Online experience.
“I was able to analyze a lot of those scenarios that were very at the forefront of what you would naturally hear in Saskatchewan’s everyday workplace,” he said.
Moore says the 5 D’s approach of direct, distract, delegate, delay, and document is the framework that bystander intervention is built on and can be used for practical daily application.
Gender-based violence and intimate partner violence largely impacts Indigenous communities. As an Indigenous man, Smoke says that the program promotes intergenerational healing because it confronts the products of colonization like toxic masculinity and misogyny.
“Being open with our emotions was never something that we were able to do,” he said. ‘’It is something that I still struggle personally to even do, but I can see those [who are]healing for real. But it’s definitely going to take time.”
He says that the program builds the skills so that helps one call out the uncle that often makes inappropriate comments or jokes.
Moore says that prevention is not theoretical and requires leadership to happen. Upstander Online is now available for licensing across and outside the province. The cost to purchase a license is currently $100 per person, but Moore encourages small community organizations to reach out about their discounts available in the next two weeks of its launch.
Because Upstander Online is still in its pilot phase, they hope to receive more feedback in order to make the program stronger. To sign up, reach out to upstander@ywca.com or find Upstander Online on their website.
