This Fall, VIPIRG is inviting students to apply to create a new working group related to VIPIRG’s current priorities.
Working groups bring together students and community members to learn and organize around an issue. Groups receive support from VIPIRG including access to meeting rooms, office resources, webspace, outreach, advertising, photocopying, etc.
Commitments include: members attend one open-house meeting or skills-share per year, having a student as contact person who stays in touch with a VIPIRG staff person, and contributing to outreach.
For more information contact us.
Current VIPIRG working groups include:
The street community is subject to disproportionate ticketing for minor offenses and frequent police harassment. The social and economic costs of this policing of poverty are unacceptable. Its time for us to set things straight and make this a safer community for everyone.
This initiative is a current and on-going work of a member of the Lekwungen community whom is inviting Indigenous people and allies to work together in reinstating the Kwetlal food system.
Do you want hands-on learning about supporting local native plants, and how to remove plants that destroy the balance in local Indigenous food systems?
…Or if you already have knowledge about local plants and ‘restoration’, want to share what you’ve learned?
Allies of Drug War Survivors is currently working alongside the Society of Living Illicit Drug Users (SOLID) and The Beddow Centre to host an ‘Activism and Advocacy Skills-building Convergence’ by and for people who use drugs right here in Victoria.
The Automated Project aims to bring students, staff and faculty together to resist the neoliberal restructuring of post-secondary education
This spring, Homes Not Prisons is taking these findings to city officials, demanding changes to city bylaws and policing practices…
Urban Agriculture has a listserve. The listserve is used to connect people that are involved in urban agriculture in greater Victoria and elsewhere. If you’re involved with a group that’s doing urban agriculture, or know of some research that is being or has been conducted or is planned, or anything else connected with urban agriculture, [...]
Media Watch Media Watch was a longstanding VIPIRG working group in the 1990s. Media Watch worked to challenge inaccurate and distorted journalism; to help people critically analyze media reports; and to build support for alternative, community-driven forms of media. This and similar campaigns were successful in greatly increasing public awareness of the corporate agenda driving [...]
VIPIRG’s Alternative Economics committee initially focused on public education about alternatives to capitalist economics. Out of interest in gaining hands-on experience, committee members organized Amaranth, a food-buying group and store promoting organic foods. When Amaranth first began in 1995, there were virtually no local outlets for affordable organic dry goods. The food-buying group quickly grew [...]
While there has been an increase in fairly traded goods available in Victoria and at UVic, there is still much to be done to increase the awareness and market share of these ethical products. From Sep 2005-April 2006 Ian Hussey, co-founder of the Canadian Fair Trade Network and a Masters student at UVic, coordinated a [...]
