Plans underway to hold campaign school
Plans are afoot to hold a campaign school for women in Port Hawkesbury next fall to encourage them to seek local government office.
Campaign schools are often held in the year leading up to municipal elections. In this case, the desire was to hold it away from Halifax to make it as accessible as possible to women in Cape Breton and eastern Nova Scotia, one of the organizers, Port Hawkesbury Mayor Brenda Chisholm Beaton, said in an interview.
“We’re going to take the year to try to create a really good venue and the focus will be primarily on local government,” she said. “It’s to make it more accessible, definitely, to women from the Strait area and also Cape Breton, so we’ll be focused on those two regions.”
Local government will also be at the heart of the agenda and under that banner ChisholmBeaton includes First Nations communities.
“We wanted to make sure that we collaborate with our First Nations communities as well so that when you look at local government, we’ll be educating and informing women from our First Nations communities as well as our municipalities.”
In addition to talking about what is involved with running a campaign, participants will also learn about what is involved with the work of a councillor. Reducing barriers to women who may be interested in attending such a school but may have many other competing responsibilities to deal with is important, Chisholm-Beaton said.
She noted organizers set up a social media page for the project which attracted more than 500 women in its first three days.
“Maybe not all those women will run, but I think what it’s accomplishing is that women are interested in how to become more involved or how to become more aware of what’s happening in their communities from a local government perspective,” Chisholm-Beaton said.
Even if they don’t choose to run themselves, she noted the school may encourage women to get more involved with other local committees.
Among the bodies organizers hope to work with are the Federation of Nova Scotia Municipalities, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Department of Municipal Affairs and Status of Women, and local groups such as the Cape Breton Partnership.
The organizing committee includes women leaders from local municipalities and First Nations communities, Chisholm-Beaton added. They will help to determine what content will be presented during the school.
“I think that we will probably like to get, in terms of information, taking a hard look at our municipalities and our First Nations councils in the Strait and in Cape Breton, just trying to determine whether there’s balance or imbalance in terms of having female voices and perspective at those tables,” she said.
“It will be interesting to see exactly where we stand in terms of representation and maybe set a goal, where do we want to be in 2020 or where do we want to be in 2025.”