HALIFAX, N.S. — This Friday, a candle-light vigil is being held in Lunenburg. It is to show support for the Second Story Women’s Centre, a not-for-profit ...
HALIFAX, N.S. — This Friday, a candle-light vigil is being held in Lunenburg. It is to show support for the, a not-for-profit group that’s been operating on the south shore for the last 40 years. Or at least it was until recently. Sue Bookchin is with the Be the Peace Institute. It is a feminist group working to address the roots and consequences of gender-based violence and advance systemic change for gender equity and social justice.
And for years, when I first went into Second Story, they were doing assertiveness programs for girls. In the summer they do they've done the girl talk program for girls between ages nine and 12. There's so much programming that is mindfulness, stress relief, all the things that we all need in order to grapple with this complex and pressured life that we're in. And those are all free for the community.
And so, this apparently had been going on for some months. And at the point that the staff reached out to the community, it was pretty awful. And they also had an attempt at mediation. One of the local women who has been connected with Second Story has been a mediator for many decades. And they were asked by the board, to be involved in a mediation. And that process started, which of course it always starts with meeting with each of the parties separately.
But actually, before that meeting happened, the staff felt that the whole situation was so untenable, that they resigned on mass. Every single staff member. And two of those resignations they accepted right away the board, and the other ones they negotiated to stay on so that the centre could remain open, because what else could they do, but have some staff stay. And with no explanation of why they accepted some and not others.
And so we did have some advice from a charity lawyer about the bylaws about what the rights were of the membership And then we reached out to the Provincial Status of Women who is the funder. All women's centres and transition houses in the province comes through the Department of Community Services. That kind of the intermediary or the person who has signed the contract people who signed the contract for those service level agreements has been the office of Status of Women.
Now, something that is a little confusing is that the old board had a different set of bylaws. And in that set of bylaws, it did say that only the board can remove board members. But that set of bylaws was never registered with Joint Stocks. So, we had to go by the bylaws that were registered with joint stocks, which is what we did. For some reason, whoever it was at Community Services upheld the notion that the general meeting we held was not legitimate.
I've sat on some dysfunctional boards. And something that I'm noticing in the field and then I'll get to the to the rally on Friday, or maybe I'll do that first and then tell you my bigger picture thinking about this at this point, we feel like we do need to rally the community. There are a lot of supporters of Second Story Women's Centre who don't know what's going on.
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