Election season is upon us
And we’ve been busy ...
As the election season creeps closer and close, we’ve been taking stock of the work that we’ve done to help prepare women run for municipal council and school board trustee. We’ve also been considering what we’ll be doing to support them through the election period itself.
Since spring of 2017, we've been busy offering programming and different resources to women in the North who want to run for council or school board trustee.
Nominations are being filed, and with an end of July deadline to file paperwork, we're gearing up to help the brave women who are running get elected.
So here’s our game plan
Campaign Fundamentals Webinar Series
Join us as we dive into the different aspects of campaigns with our upcoming webinar series. Did we mention it's free and that you can do this from the comfort of your own home? All you need is an internet connection and an hour to give us on Thursday nights in August.
All women candidates, female volunteers and people working on women candidate campaigns are welcome to join us. Webinars will be approximately 50 minutes in length with the option for a Q&A at the end. Please register for each webinar individually so that we can send you the proper link as the event approaches. We can't wait for you to join us!
August 9th: Crafting Your Story
August 16th: Canvassing
August 23rd: Fundraising with DemocracyKit
August 30th: Social Media & Your Campaign
#ElectNOW
We know how much difficulty women that are running have trying to get their stories told in the local media, and we want to change that. We'll be doing a weekly feature that will highlight women candidates running all over Northern Ontario on our blog. The interview will be Q&A style, and candidates can answer as little or as many questions as they would like to give their future constituents the opportunity to get to know them a little better. We'll then put that on our blog and share it on our Facebook page, Twitter page and our Instagram account. Candidates will have the chance to share it as they please. We'll also include a graphic that they can share. This blog post will be available on our website (http://www.polinow.org), where we will also have a designated candidate page that will include the candidate's picture and a link to the blog post. We're hoping to get as many women candidates in the North involved as possible.
Since June, we have been reaching out to the women filing their nominations in Northern Ontario’s 9 cities and sending out the survey to those who reach out to us. One of our goals here at PoliticsNOW is to amplify the voices of women, we think that a blog series featuring the women running in the North this is a perfect fit. We can’t do this alone, though - we need your help reaching out to women candidates. Not all cities have candidate information readily available online for us to reach out to the women running, and not all smaller communities have the internet capabilities to post it at all. This makes it hard to ensure we reach out to every single woman that is running. Know, though, that we are committed to amplifying and supporting all women candidates, and would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to find them. If you are a woman that is running in the upcoming election that hasn’t received an email from us but wants to be included in this endeavour, reach out to us.
Please note that these blog posts are not an endorsement. We want to give equal support, equal opportunities and equal voices to all women who are running. As a non-partisan organization, we have chosen to remain neutral in the election itself. We trust that voters will decide which candidate best fits with their vision for their school board, ward or town/city. Our goal is to use our platform to help women reach more constituents, as well as give citizens the opportunity to find which women are running for office in their region.
If this is something that interests you (or you know someone who would be a great feature), please don't hesitate to fill out this form to get in touch with us
Campaign Resources
We’ve been building our campaign resource page since our inception. Make sure that you check it out and take a look at all of the resources that we have created and curated from around the Internet. Feel like you need a little additional help? Email info@polinow.org to get connected with someone from our org who can offer a little extra one-on-one help.
Open to Suggestions
We're planning other activities and programs to help women in the North be able to run campaigns more effectively. If you'd like to have your say on what we do, or you have some great ideas, don't hesitate to let us know through this survey.
Thank you so much for helping us elect women in the North!
Don't forget to follow us on social media to get the latest from us and learn more about how you can help #ElectNOW.
