Training Institute Opportunities

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Training Institute: Support for Service Providers in Manitoba

The Sexuality Education Resource Centre MB (SERC) Training Institute offers comprehensive training opportunities to support service providers in Manitoba. Each draws on expertise, up-to-date research, evidence-based approaches, and local resources to enhance knowledge, skills, and awareness of sexuality issues. Training Institute sessions include a mix of virtual workshops (held over Zoom) and in-person training opportunities.

If you are interested in private, customized training for your organization, please fill out this Training Request Form.

Teaching Comprehensive Sexuality: Facilitation Skills for Teachers and Youth Service Providers (Winnipeg)

CANCELLED

August 21-22, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Location: Norwood Community Centre, 87 Walmer Street, Winnipeg

SERC has been training and consulting on comprehensive sexuality education in Manitoba for over 20 years. Teen Talk, our youth program, has been leading hundreds of workshops every year in and out of classrooms with youth for the same amount of time. This workshop is the foundation of our work.

As the world keeps changing our workshop development is ongoing. Over the pandemic our facilitators in different cities were able to collaborate to improve our workshops for a wider range of age groups. This workshop will cover updated information and activities to use with youth aged grade 5 and up. The design sets participants up to facilitate these activities with youth immediately after leaving the workshop.
These activities can be used with adults as well, but we will focus on working with youth.

Interested in being a sexuality educator or sharpening your skills? This workshop is a great place to start.

Note: This workshop is two days in-person in Winnipeg, MB

Teaching Comprehensive Sexuality: Facilitation Skills for Teachers and Youth Service Providers (Brandon)

CANCELLED

August 29-30, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Location: Brandon Tourism (Riverbank Discovery Centre), 545 Conservation Drive, Brandon, MB

SERC has been training and consulting on comprehensive sexuality education in Manitoba for over 20 years. Teen Talk, our youth program, has been leading hundreds of workshops every year in and out of classrooms with youth for the same amount of time. This workshop is the foundation of our work.

As the world keeps changing our workshop development is ongoing. Over the pandemic our facilitators in different cities were able to collaborate to improve our workshops for a wider range of age groups. This workshop will cover updated information and activities to use with youth aged grade 5 and up. The design sets participants up to facilitate these activities with youth immediately after leaving the workshop.
These activities can be used with adults as well, but we will focus on working with youth.

Interested in being a sexuality educator or sharpening your skills? This workshop is a great place to start.

Note: This workshop is two days in-person in Brandon, MB

Past Workshops

Creating a Culture of Consent at Work (Virtual)

Learn how practicing Consent at Work can contribute to your workplace culture’s foundation of trust, respect, and safety from the harms of workplace sexual harassment. We deliver this workshop to participants from all levels within any workplace and cover additional topics including bystander interventions, supporting disclosures, and navigating the resources available to Manitobans who’ve experienced workplace sexual harassment. Visit consentatwork.ca to learn more.

Creating a Culture of Consent at Work (In-Person)

4-part series

Workplace sexual harassment is a harmful pattern of behaviour that negatively impacts individual staff as well as larger workplace units and teams. Over the course of three evenings, we break down our project’s full session where participants will identify and discuss the underlying issues that may lead to harmful workplace sexual harassment and, develop a practical lens and understanding of what ‘Consent at Work’ can mean in and for your workplace. Participants will also leave with learning effective skills for bystander intervention, how to better support staff who have disclosed experiences of workplace sexual harassment as well as information about how to navigate the local resource map of support available for Manitobans. Snacks and breaks are provided.

Starting the Conversation: Sexuality in Our Work With People Labelled With Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities

People living with intellectual and developmental disabilities are sexual beings with diverse experiences like everyone else, but face unique barriers to sexual and reproductive autonomy. This introductory training aims to support growth in service providers looking to enhance their skills being reactive to “teachable moments” as well as proactive in starting conversations around sexual and reproductive health with those they support.  

Teaching Comprehensive Sexuality Web Series

The Teaching Comprehensive Sexuality Web Series is a group of 6 conversations designed to be taken as a group or one-off sessions. Each session looks at a different bite-sized element of comprehensive sexuality education inside or outside a traditional classroom.

Session 1 – Languages of Sexuality: How to talk about talking about sexuality

What do we mean when we say “sexuality?” There is no blank slate: sexuality is talked about all the time through slang, euphemisms and silence. Let’s have a conversation about how our language sends messages we might not even know we were putting out there. For those that work with youth of all ages.

Session 2 – Consent as the foundation of Sexuality Education

Consent is the basis for sexuality education and applies to every topic from birth control to identity. See various exercises to help build a culture of consent in multiple contexts. For those that work with youth of all ages.

Session 3 – Trans and Intersex inclusive language using Anatomy BINGO

You will work with trans, intersex and/or gender diverse youth that deserve information about their bodies. We will play a game of Anatomy BINGO as a way to practice “bodies with” language that includes the most students as possible when discussing anatomy and puberty. For those that work with youth of all ages.  

Session 4 – Risk Rater: Facilitating discussions about Harm Reduction

Abstinence and “no” aren’t the only answers to sexual activity. Living involves risk and harm to varying levels. Abstinence only lessons teach unobtainable “harm elimination.” Practice how to discuss meeting youth where they are at to reduce risks and harm through the Risk Rater activity. For those that work with high school aged youth.  

Session 5: Gender and Power: Looking at the binary “Ultimate (Wo)man”

Through a discussion of gender stereotypes and media analysis, this activity will explore how the gender binary impacts us all. Learn to build improved self-image and autonomy through an exploration of our own strengths. For those that work with grade 7 and older youth.  

Session 6 – The Balanced Approach: Oppression and strengths in gender & sexual diversity

The commonly used “Porcupine Activity” explores how oppression impacts marginalized communities to expose systems of discrimination. This balanced approach will offer a second “porcupine” to reveal the strengths of naming and building a community. For those that work with grade 7 and older youth. 

2STLGBQ+ Diversity and Inclusion Training for Service Providers

Two-part workshop – two halfdays online 

Supporting diversity and promoting inclusion are essential components of working with people in culturally relevant and safe ways. This training opportunity invites service providers to broaden their awareness and build capacity around Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer identities and experiences.   

“SEXT ED:” Youth Sexual Development and Consensual Literacy   

People of all ages live much more of their lives online than 20 years ago. Digital dating apps are no longer trends, but norms in many places. Is it any surprise that young people are developing and experiencing their sexuality online as well? This training focuses on how to reduce the risks and increase the benefits of online sexuality through an essential life skill: consensual literacy. Service providers will leave with understandings of the legal aspects of viewing and sending sexual material and ways to have open, non-judgmental conversations about sexuality and technology with youth.   

Teaching Comprehensive Sexuality: Facilitation Skills for Teachers and Youth Service Providers 

SERC has been training and consulting on comprehensive sexuality education in Manitoba for over 20 years. Teen Talk, our youth program, has been leading hundreds of workshops every year in and out of classroom with youth for the same amount of time. You could say this workshop is the basis of our Training Institute.  

We definitely know a thing or two, but we certainly don’t know everything. This is one reason our youth program evaluates and updates their workshops every year. In 2021, Teen Talk took on the large task of not only updating their workshops, but including more content for pre teen aged youth (grade 5 and 7 levels).  

This workshop will cover updated information and activities to use with youth aged grade 5 and up. This training is designed to set participants up to facilitate these activities with youth immediately after leaving the workshop. Interested in being a sexuality educator or sharpening your skills? This workshop is a great place to start.  

Co-Leadership in Community Health  

After two years of working together as co-executive directors, Jared Star and Leigh Anne Caron will share their learnings about the strengths of shared leadership and the considerations when thinking about moving towards shared leadership models.   

Advocacy Into Action: SERC’s Approach to FGC

In this workshop, we will share information about Our Selves, Our Daughters Program, an award-winning initiative that provides space and resources for newcomer women from communities affected by female genital cutting (FGC) working for a change within their communities in Winnipeg, and advocating for improved care and support offered by service providers. This session will provide an overview of program learnings, challenges and successes, and SERC’s approach when working with these communities.

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