Volunteer with Niagara Reproductive Justice
Next meeting date:
Every Wednesday
6pm - 7pm
Zoom
(in person 3rd week of the month)
Email us to get involved!
volunteer@niagarareproductivejustice.com
What We Do
Niagara Reproductive Justice is a non-hierarchical community group that works to increase access to and awareness of sexual and reproductive health resources in Niagara. We were founded in 2019 to counter the anti-abortion activity in Niagara.
We are an Action Group of OPIRG.
Volunteering With Us
We meet virtually for an hour once a week to discuss our projects and ideas. The pace we work at and the things we work on are guided by the capacity and interest of the group. We have two primary focuses: monitoring and countering the anti-abortion activity in Niagara, and increasing abortion and reproductive/sexual healthcare access. We focus on each area in alternating weeks. If you’re more interested in one area than the other, you can attend meetings every other week.
When you email volunteer@niagarareproductivejustice.com to get involved, your email will be responded to by a team member who will ask you if you’re interested in joining the internal organizing team or our Abortion & Reproductive Support Network (ARSN) which does client-facing work.
Once you’ve clarified that you’re interested in joining the internal organizing team, we’ll ask you if you’d like to attend the next Zoom meeting. If you aren’t sure yet and want to chat more about what it means to be involved, we’re happy to set up a time to chat in person or over the phone or more over email.
If you think you’d like to come to a meeting to see what it’s all about, we’ll ask you to first agree to uphold our Values Statement. If you have any questions or concerns about any of it, we’re happy to chat more and we also welcome any feedback about it! Our Values Statement is always changing and growing as we grow and learn more and we’re happy to chat about it.
After you’ve had a chance to review the Values Statement and feel like it fits with your values, we’ll send you a Zoom link to join the next meeting. At the meeting, you’re welcome to participate as much or as little as you want. If you want to ask questions about anything you find confusing, volunteer to take on tasks, or just sit and listen, whatever you want is good with us.
Meetings usually have anywhere from 4 – 10 team members at it. We chat about NRJ’s current projects, decide what we want to work on and what our goals are, and check in about tasks from last week’s meeting.
After the meeting, a team member will email you to ask what you thought and if you think you want to get involved further. If you do, we’ll encourage you to attend the next meeting. After that meeting, we’ll ask you to join our Slack workspace (if you haven’t used it before, it’s pretty easy!). From there, you’re a member of the team and can stay up to date with things through Slack and the meetings 🙂
Meetings usually have anywhere from 4 – 10 team members at it. We chat about NRJ’s current projects, decide what we want to work on and what our goals are, and check in about tasks from last week’s meeting. They last one hour. Sometimes the meetings take place in person and sometimes they take place over Zoom. We meet up in person for extra meetings and social gatherings from time-to-time, mostly in St. Catharines and Welland. Not everyone is able to attend every meeting and that’s okay!
No. We do have members who are students, as well as members who are workers, full-time caregivers, and a mix of all of that. We are not affiliated with Brock University. Our parent organization, OPIRG Brock, has Brock’s name but also is not affiliated with Brock University.
For sure! No prior knowledge or experience necessary, just a commitment to reproductive justice and a desire to make your community a better place 🙂
The people who first formed NRJ had no specific knowledge of reproductive justice, we were just really angry about all the anti-abortion billboards and decided to try to do something about it.
Just a desire to be part of a group of people trying to do this work! You probably have more skills than you realize, and we would love to work with you!
You do not need to have personal experience with abortion or pregnancy.
Niagara Reproductive Justice is not a registered non-profit or charity. We are a grassroots group of neighbors, friends, and community members. We work with OPIRG, a local registered non-profit, in order to apply for grants and for accountability practices. OPIRG is guided by a Board of Directors who are able to receive incident reports on behalf of NRJ volunteers and clients.
You can read them here!
You can learn more about joining our Abortion & Reproductive Support Network here!
We are situated in Niagara and currently have members who live in St. Catharines, Welland, Niagara Falls, Oakville, Toronto, and Chicago. We do not have any physical location. We are a 100% volunteer-run community collective and our main source of funding is through individual donations. All of our work takes place remotely aside from some in person meetings that happens at a volunteer’s house, and when we host or attend community events as a team.
NRJ relies on some tech platforms like Zoom and Slack in order to communicate with one another and have meetings. If you can’t or don’t prefer to use the internet, NRJ is currently not the right group for you. You are NOT required to use social media to be part of NRJ.
We pay for a Zoom account that includes some auto-transcribed captions for meetings; however, the accuracy varies. For folks who are hard of hearing or deaf, our meetings may not be very accessible.
Children and people’s dependents are welcome at meetings, whether virtual or in-person.
For sure! Please email us at volunteer@niagarareproductivejustice.com and we’d be happy to chat more over email, over the phone, over Zoom, or grab a coffee in person!