CAMP project

The CAMP Assault Mitigation Project (CAMP) is a program created by EVA BC member Northern Society for Domestic Peace (NSDP). In collaboration with industry and companies, CAMP works to combat sexual harassment and assault in remote work camps and workplaces including reforestation, wildfire and outdoor recreation camps. 

The CAMP program launched in 2018. Carol Seychuk is the executive director of NSDP and has started to see the training have an impact on many communities.

“We teach [the workers in the camps] that everyone deserves respect. In tree planting you are out in the middle of a forest by yourself and there’s lots of stuff going on so how do camp managers manage that? How do they train their staff? They don’t have a lot of support or skill or money to have big policies,” Carol said.  

The CAMP team researches, develops and delivers industry-specific sexual assault and harassment training. CAMP education incorporates the lived experience of workers to make it relevant to geographically remote workplaces where crews are stationed together for extended periods of time. Remote work camps are unique work environments because of the isolation, the young worker demographic, and potential for drug and alcohol consumption. 

“CAMP training includes a perspective of the impact of the workers’ camps on gender-based violence, and the historical Indigenous community experiences with settlers and intruders and the Murdered Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) along our corridor. We show that they need to be responsive and respectful,” said Carol. “I think the more the companies learn and understand what their impact is going to be on communities and hear that from Indigenous communities, is so important.” 

Airika Owen works both as a Sexual Assault Services Coordinator for NSDP and Coordinator for the CAMP program. She develops training presentations, support resources and collaborates with industry to promote system changes to improve safety for vulnerable workers. She shared the following practices they’ve found have had the biggest impact and been key to the program’s success:  

• Incorporate reference/background checks into the hiring process: an effective strategy for creating a safe camp culture in an isolated environment. Workers hired through word of mouth may have been dismissed from a different camp for various reasons, including sexual misconduct.   

• Provide peer support worker training for conflict resolution and a trauma-informed approach to responding to disclosures of sexual assault. 

• Deliver bystander intervention training and training to empower workers to stand together and speak up against sexual harassment and violence, including in its more subtle forms like jokes and microaggressions. 

• Establish an incident reporting process that includes an anonymous reporting option to encourage reporting or offer an external third party to receive reports to avoid conflicts of interest.  

In addition to providing education, the CAMP team supports companies in tree-planting and other remote camp workplaces with: 

• The development or revision of sexual violence prevention policies and procedures. 

• Ongoing workplace issues or incidents. 

• Crisis counselling and resources for workers who have experienced workplace harassment or assault. 

A big recent change the CAMP team notes is the increase in wildfires and the firefighters coming into the northern towns. The CAMP project has had success with word of mouth between tree planting and wildfire camps about the benefits of the training. “Now we’ve got wildfires we have a lot more concentration of people coming into our communities,” Carol said. “And after six years, we’ve had an impact on a lot of companies. We have more talk, more companies reaching out to us who are interested in learning. Like a small town, one industry talks to another company and tells them, ‘This is good information – you need to take this training’.”  

The success of the CAMP project has resulted in its expansion outside of Northern BC to tree planting and wildfire camps across BC, Alberta, Ontario and the Northwest Territories. 

The CAMP program has also expanded to help small outdoor adventure experience camps, like fishing, ski adventures and rafting. 

To learn more about NSDP’s work and employer sexual harassment and assault prevention training and resources go to CAMP Assault Mitigation Project (employers’ page).