2025-26 Tour Across Canada: $10,000 of Impact

In April of 2025, BOLT Safety Society’s Operations Director and PR Director were each selected as fellows in the TakingItGlobal Sprout Ideas Fellowship. Along with this immense opportunity to be part of a nationally competitive social impact program, came $5,000 in funding–each. That meant $10,000 to spend on generating tangible progress towards combatting violence, and in August of the same year, we embarked on an ambitious adventure.

8 cities covered: we started our journey in Montreal, meandering through Ottawa, Gatineau, Richmond Hill, and Toronto before hopping over to Calgary and bringing it home to Richmond and Vancouver. At each city, we gathered local resources to post on our Digital Platform and formed partnerships with local businesses to become Safe Hubs.

At our invite-only, private events, we also screened the pre-release version of our short film, forget me not, a documentary on humanitarian issues in Colombia. The film featured experts and those with lived experiences on sex work, trauma recovery, incarceration, and more.

We are proud to have partnered with 15 new Safe Hubs across the country. These Safe Hubs are committed to being safe spaces–whether someone needs to flee an abusive home, or just to avoid street harassment. Each Safe Hub has a poster of local resources, including crisis lines and shelter information. For an interactive map of all Safe Hubs locations, now at 63 locations and 20 cities across the country, head to boltsafety.org/safehubs. 

Additionally, we hosted several impactful educational workshops, growing our program impact to 1,300+ participants. These workshops build capacity in community members to step up in the face of witnessed violence, support survivors in navigating available support systems, and foster a culture of respect and consent.

We also compiled resources for survivors of sexual violence and their allies from each locale that we visited, or updated pre-existing resources. Click on the articles below for more:

• Crisis support

• Montreal resources

• Ottawa resources

• Toronto resources

• Calgary resources

• Metro Vancouver resources

This ambitious tour could not have been possible without the Sprout Fellowship and Government of Canada (via the Canada Service Corps)’s generous funding, as well as donations from our community. We are dedicated to putting every cent toward furthering our mission to build safer and more equitable communities in Canada and beyond.

We invite you to check out moments from this project on our social media – we’re @boltsafety everywhere.

As a team, we look forward to building on the relationships we’ve nurtured during our project to continue fighting back against sexual violence and domestic abuse.

More BOLT Safety resources:

• Let’s talk about consent: https://www.boltsafety.org/post/let-s-talk-about-consent 

• Making a personal safety plan: https://www.boltsafety.org/post/safety_plan 

• What is gaslighting? https://www.boltsafety.org/post/what-is-gaslighting

• Recognizing signs of abuse: https://www.boltsafety.org/post/recognizing-signs-of-abuse 

If you wish to learn more about our work, or collaborate with us, please email our team at info@boltsafety.org

In solidarity,

The team at BOLT Safety Society

@boltsafety | boltsafety.org

Donate: ko-fi.com/boltsafety 

BOLT Safety Society is a federally registered not-for-profit organization in Canada.

Disclaimer: We endeavor to verify published information with experts. You are using our information, resources, and programs at your own risk. Please contact us if you see an error so that we can investigate the matter and make corrections where necessary.