2022/2023 EVENTS
Events
National Advocacy Campaign
Timeline Overview
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Campaign: September to May
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September: Chapters meet with local MPs to introduce themselves and EWB, as well as Canada’s global contributions. The annual advocacy campaign is introduced.
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October: Last chance to meet with MPs before they leave their ridings and go back to Ottawa. Chapters are also building local campaign awareness.
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November: Big push for campaign awareness to show public support.
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December: holidays
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January: Major Action, at our national conferences serves a big energy point for the campaign. We either deliver our campaign message in a loud, unified call out or celebrate the wins we’ve seen thus far.
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February: Chapters invited to host their own advocacy events on campus.
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March: The federal budget is released and EWB community looks to see if our policy recommendations are reflected.
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April: Day of Action/Hill Day prep.
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May: Hill Day! Advocacy community members come in from all across Canada to meet with their MPs on the Hill to respond to the budget.
EWB is constantly advocating for a better world! EWB’s National Office team and Chapter members coordinate activities to push for policies and legislation that increase the scale and effectiveness of international development. We also organize public awareness campaigns to build knowledge around international development topics and issues in our communities. Check out the latest advocacy campaign here.
Moving forward, EWB hopes to advocate for policy changes that will further increase the scale and effectiveness of Canada’s contributions to ID. Pushing for a continued increase in development funding, we will also focus our attention on increasing investment in early stage, female- and youth-led social enterprises, and on leveraging innovation, foreign and trade policies to reduce inequalities and accelerate development.
As conduits for EWB’s advocacy campaigns, chapters help to build public support for Canada’s increased role in ID, demonstrate this support to policymakers, and are empowered to frame development priorities within a broader policy agenda of finance, innovation, trade and foreign policy. Using these tools, chapter members encourage decision makers to become champions for increasing Canada’s Official Development Assistance, hold elected officials accountable to act on their commitments, and monitor legislation and budgets to review to what extent commitments are met.
An EWB tradition in campaigns, the Major Action is a mass mobilization of the chapter community that takes place during our annual xChange Conference. Members of the EWB community take to the streets of their host city to directly engage Canadians and advocate for action on the topics they care about. Past Major Actions have taken place in Ottawa, Montreal, and Hamilton, just to name a few host cities. Issues have included advocating to Stop Tied Aid, and Hello 2030 outreach action promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).