Most of us believe that the right to education, from kindergarten through high school, is fundamental. However, not everyone is able to fully enjoy that right; not everyone is able to obtain an education that is empowering, relevant, safe and useful. Women who have lived in violent homes, who have been subjected to physical or sexual abuse, who have experienced systemic violence such as that experienced by many women at residential school, did not receive an education that was safe, empowering, relevant or useful.

This kit about violence and women's education was designed for adult educators and learners. It's main concern is to look at how violence affects a woman's education and her ability to learn. Violence has many faces; it can be of a physical nature, emotional, sexual, racist or concerning one's spirituality. The Canadian Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women (CCLOW) established a national working group to oversee this project, with women from all parts of the country contributing to the pilot workshops.
In the document are sections on describing the barriers to women's education, sharing our experiences, creating a better learning environment and resources such as workshop guidelines, a guide to survivor's language, as well as publications, kits and videos to be used as references.

This kit is designed for adult educators and is CCLOW's way of sharing some of our experiences and ideas gathered from documents we have produced in the past and workshops we have conducted across the country . We also hope it will encourage you to think about the issues raised here, to use the ideas and techniques discussed by our authors, to share this material with your learners, to adapt and/or expand these ideas so they suit your learners, and to collect materials from your community.

The kit is available at a cost of $8 plus $2 postage & handling & GST, from CCLOW, 47 Main Street, Toronto, ON M4E 2V6, Tel. (416) 699-1909, Fax (416) 699-2145. E-mail : cclow@web.apc.org
ISBN 0-921283-13-X (96.11.04)