A new gallery wall with interpretive panels featuring Coady Institute’s largest ongoing project Engage! Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship is just one of the ways the institute is celebrating International Development Week (IDW) 2025.

IDW takes place the first full week of February to recognize and celebrate how Canadians and Canadian organizations are helping to eradicate poverty worldwide. Global Affairs Canada’s theme for IDW 2025 is Building a Better World Together.

Coady Institute is highlighting its work with partners each day of the week including video releases, a pizza party for StFX students, releasing a new publication, and culminating with a webinar on Friday morning.

The videos will be released during the week and speak to how all the organizations are Building a Better World Together in Haiti, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, India, and Bangladesh. This includes supporting women farmers and agroecology, advancing gender equality and poverty reduction, and building climate resilience.

Coady will also be sharing its latest publication, a paper entitled “Gender-based violence: Can a more comprehensive definition lead to better strategies for increasing women’s economic agency?” This is part of the Institute’s ongoing work with Self-Employed Women’s Association in India and funded by the Ford Foundation in Delhi and New York.

In addition to the videos and publication release, Tuesday, Feb. 4, Coady Institute, Martimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Solidarity Network, and StFX Service Learning are hosting a pizza social for StFX students interested in learning about an International Youth Internship Program offered by the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation with funding from Global Affairs Canada.

IDW ends with a webinar that is part of the Coady Coffee House series and already has 270 people registered to attend. Challenging Hegemony in Development will feature six Pathy Foundation Fellows who are mid-way through their fellowship years completing their social change initiatives in Morrocco, Indonesia, South Africa, Guatemala, Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta. The Fellows will be speaking about how climate emergency, unjust economic order, and deeply polarized political discourse are presenting challenges and redefining what ‘development’ should be to foster a sustainable future for the planet and humanity.

St. Francis Xavier University and Coady Institute stand on the lands of Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded home of the Mi’kmaw. We express our deep gratitude and appreciation to the generations of Mi’kmaw who, since time immemorial, have loved and stewarded these lands and the beings who call them home. Colonization is not just history; it exists in the present tense. While we strive to decolonize ourselves and our University, we know there is still much for us to learn.

We are committed to doing the hard work of self-reflection and to repairing relationships with the Mi’kmaw on whose lands we reside, including embracing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action and embodying their spirit in our plans to move forward with our University.

Ms~t wiaqpulti’kl ankukamkewe’l
We are all treaty people.

Coady Institute
St. Francis Xavier University
4780 Tompkins Lane
PO Box 5000
Antigonish, NS B2G 2W5
Canada

Phone: (902) 867-3960
Phone: 1-866-820-7835 (within Canada)
Fax: (902) 867-3907

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