Friends: what follows is a summary of our goals for the next few months at STAND UBC. Our next meeting to discuss these things will be TUESDAY (different from last week!) at 12 noon. We'll meet at SUB 205.
This club can exceed even our own expectations if we can get working on multiple projects at once. If you're interested in one of the below items, email me asap so that we can kick up the dust for Darfur and get people to care about it!
Stay well, and thanks for your interest.
***
EVENTS: we need people to look after each of the following:
Showing “The Devil Came on Horseback”
We could possibly do this at the Norm. We need someone to the video/rights, secure the Norm (the Terry project might help with this), ensure we have the right A/V equipment. This film is 85 minutes long, so we could show it with a lighter, more popular film to attrack the biggest audience. The 2nd film wouldn't need to be about Darfur.
-This event *may* require that 50% or more of those in attendance belong to our club—if we can't get around this, we could charge $5 (our membership fee) for both the films AND club membership.
Women, Girls and War info display with Oxfam
-Justina is interested in this project—anyone else?
-this could be in the SUB main concourse, which we need to arrange with the AMS
-sources for info: Debb Bodkin, among others
-could involve letter-writing tables with action points
-perhaps during awareness week? We could pair up with Amnesty International UBC as well, since they already have the space booked at that time...
3. Fall Speaker Event
Theme: the China-Russia-Sudan connection. Co-sponsor with commerce Student Society?? Econ SS? Development/Economics...
Speaker suggestions: ask your poli-sci/african studies/economics professors for connections
-contact operations@standcanada.org, and ask for a list of speakers for UBC, and what support they might be able to get us.
-we also need food for this event—could seek donations from local businesses
Possible Venue: Liu Norm, Scarfe, Freddy Wood, Ballroom, Partyroom;
Timing will depend on 2 factors: room availability and speaker availability—so we need to look into both of these starting now.
4. Darfur/Darfur art exhibit? This looks like an ambitious project, but it would be amazing to pull off. Check www.darfurdarfur.org for more info. We could team up with Canadian Students for Darfur, or any number of local civil society groups (Sudanese Assoc. in BC?) and pool together enough resources to mount this at a local museum or art gallery.
Other jobs that need doing:
a. Webmaster: Make use our Facebook Group, Blog, AMSlink, etc. Find new ways of interacting with the web and promoting our cause. Also, this may require fielding emails and updating membership database.
b. Someone to look into AMS funding. This might be Tanzina, our treasurer, or could be somebody else. We just need a list of what sorts of grants are available from the AMS and the Resource Centre Groups, and how to apply for them.
c. Divestment people. Check http://www.standcanada.org/index.php/take_action/divestment_campaign for some helpful background on this. You do not need to be a commerce or econ student in order to work on this campaign, although we'll take those as well!! Main goal: to get our funds out of the worst-offending companies that are currently operating on Sudanese soil, and funding the military which has killed so indiscriminately in Darfur.
In this regard, there are 5 different types of BC pension plans that we are concerned about:
College Pension Plan
Municipal PP
Public Service
Teachers'
WCB (Workers' Compensation Board)
Each of these has their own Board of Trustees. They set the policy for each plan, and thus they have power over decisions such as where investments are made (ie, oil companies who may be hurting Darfur).
If this campaign interests you, below are some further steps it would involve you choose to accept it, would involve...
-getting in touch with the Board for one of the above plans. Tell them you're concerned at learning that the BC Investment Management Corporation has recently invested in companies with questionable human rights records in Sudan, who are having an adverse effect on the human rights situation there.
-tell them you want to learn more about their [fill in the blank] Pension Plan specifically
-ask if they have an ethical investing policy, and if it mentions Darfur/Sudan
-ask how you might obtain a list of their investment “inventory” for the 2 most recent years (the 2006-07 one should be due out soon!)
-try to find out if they are open to considering divestment from certain companies who are operating in Sudan, and what it might take to urge their board to do so
Important Website for all of this: www.pensionsbc.ca. See the left side of the page for links to each plan.
To get involved with any of the above, just email ubc@standcanada.org and say so! Don't be shy. We are all just a bunch of students, but collectively, we are capable of great things.
