About Us
Who are we?
The Webbing With Wisdom team is made up of three organizations: St. Stephen’s Community House, METRAC, and East Metro Youth Services.
Our team is made up of three staff and nine peer leaders, who work together to create an understanding around cyber sexual violence, and ensure that our project speaks to the femme- identifying youth we work with.
Why did we form?
Over the years, counsellor, educators, youth workers and social workers have realized through their work with youth that the impact of the online world on femme-identifying youth has increased rapidly, so much so that many of our systems have not kept up.
Things that were happening offline (ex. sexual violence, bullying, slut shaming, etc) are happening online, and there are scarce places to go to talk about it or understand what it really meant to be a femme- identifying youth online.
What do we do?
Our team formed in 2014, with peers and social workers from all stretches of knowledge around issues such as gender-based violence, youth, and human trafficking.
In our first year, we teamed up and travelled across the city to understand one thing: “What did it mean to be a femme- identifying youth online?”
Femme-identifying youth about their experiences, what they did online, and where they would go to for help. You can read more about what we found out here.
In the second year of our project, our team got together and figured out that the best place to start was to create a place for femme- identifying youth to find information, and talk about their experiences online – exactly this website you are looking at right now!
Moving forward we hope to involve more femme-identifying youth in these conversations around cyber sexual violence (CSV) and ensure that their leaders, mentors and workers also have the knowledge they need to best support them.
*Who are Femme-identifying youth ?
Throughout this website, we reference femme-identifying youth. For us, this includes any persons who may identify, or may have once identified, as feminine, female, cis or trans – and those of all colours, shapes, sizes and traditions.