Consent Awareness Week: growing respect, care, and accountability.

A national initiative that invites us all to thoughtful, affirming, and age-appropriate conversations about consent as a cornerstone of all our relationships. Created by High School Too and Possibility Seeds. Consent Awareness Week, September 21–25, 2026.

Explore the guides Ideas to spark your week

Consent Awareness Week guides

Guides for every audience

Wherever you spend your days, in a classroom, a campus, a union hall, a city council, there's a way to bring this week to life. Each guide is free, made with care, and ready to make your own. Pick the one that fits, and adapt it to your local support services before you share it.

Schools · K–12

Guide for schools

Age-appropriate activities for every grade from Kindergarten to Grade 12, hosted on our High School Too microsite: a five-day plan, reading lists, We Believe You Day, letters for families, and classroom-ready activities.

Open the K–12 guide

Post-secondary

Guide for colleges and universities

Ideas for making consent visible on campus during the Red Zone: prevention that names accountability, centres survivors, and helps build a lasting culture. Suggestions for students, faculty, student affairs, and administration.

See what's inside

Communities

Guide for communities

Towns, cities, libraries, and local organizations can make consent part of everyday life, from proclamations to programming. Includes a step-by-step proclamation request and sample wording.

Request a proclamation

Unions

Guide for unions

Ending harassment and gender-based violence at work is union work. Educate members, build solidarity, and, if it fits, move a resolution to recognize the week, with sample language you can adapt.

See the union guide

Workplaces

Guide for workplaces

Employers and teams can make consent part of a respectful workplace culture by reviewing policies, supporting survivors, and giving staff simple, practical ways to participate during the week.

See the workplace guide

About the week

A whole week to grow consent culture

We talk about consent more than ever, and yet, for so many of us, what it actually means in practice still feels blurry. Consent Awareness Week is a chance to close that gap together: to slow down, ask better questions, and practise the kind of respect that makes everyone safer. In 2022, high school student leaders from across Canada created a grassroots group called High School Too, with ten demands for safer schools. One of those demands was an annual Consent Awareness Week. Possibility Seeds worked with High School Too to launch Canada's first Consent Awareness Week in collaboration with communities across the country.[4]

55%

of people in Canada don't fully understand what it means to give consent.[3]

Consent over the land and over our bodies cannot be separated

Consent is relational

“Everything that impacts the land in turn impacts our bodies.”

Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Women's Earth Alliance, Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies (Konsmo and Pacheco, 2016)[7]

Knowledge Keepers, youth, and Indigenous organizations have long carried teachings about the relationships among land, body, community, and kin. Learning from them makes plain that consent is not only interpersonal, it is also structural and political. It requires respect for Indigenous sovereignty, leadership, and self-determination.

Consent as a spectrum

In Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper (2019), Hayden King and Shiri Pasternak set out a spectrum of consent: denial, where consent is ignored; recognition, where a nation is consulted but cannot refuse; and reclamation, where a nation decides on its own terms. This is a framework about the rights of peoples and nations, not a version of personal consent. It makes plain a truth that holds for land and body alike: being asked is not the same as being able to say no.[8]

Learn more

Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodiessee "Consent over Land and Body," in Chapter 1, "Connected to Body, Connected to Land" (Women's Earth Alliance and the Native Youth Sexual Health Network) Land Back: Spectrum of ConsentPart One of the Yellowhead Institute Red Paper

A suggested plan

Ideas to spark your week

Here's one way you might shape the week, with a theme for each day from September 21 to 25. It's a starting point, not a checklist. Mix and match for your community, focus on what fits, or set your own path. Each audience guide offers ideas for its own context.

Tuesday2

Supporting survivors and each other

“We Believe You” Day. Make space to believe and support survivors, and to learn how to respond with care when someone shares an experience of harm. One tool you might explore together is the BRAVE Model©,* a trauma-informed framework for responding to disclosures. These are ideas to consider, not requirements.

  • Begin by listening. Listen. Follow their lead. Allow for silence and pauses.
  • Respect confidentiality. Don’t share with friends, post on socials or gossip. They get to decide who to share with and how.
  • Ask what support looks like to them. Ask what they need, be it rest, access to community supports, or a trusted adult.
  • Validate them. Remind them they’re not alone, it’s not their fault and that you believe them.
  • Empathize. Have compassion for what they’re sharing and how they’re feeling. Care for yourself, so you can keep showing up.

Some schools and workplaces wear teal as a visible sign of support, too.

* BRAVE Model© and the framework are the original work of Farrah Khan, shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence: it should be used unadapted, for non-commercial purposes, with full attribution, “The BRAVE Model is the original work of Farrah Khan.”[1] The wording here follows the model as published by Possibility Seeds.[2]

Go deeper The BRAVE Model©the five steps in full, from Possibility Seeds
Thursday4

Respectful relationships and everyday consent

Respect in real relationships: showing and receiving affection, reading verbal and non-verbal cues, and the principle that anything other than a clear yes means no.

Friday5

Digital consent and online safety

Consent in digital life: sharing photos, tagging, screenshots, app permissions, and knowing how to get help. This is also where consent and data meet, from what platforms collect to what AI tools are trained on.

Go deeper The Consentful Tech Projectwhat consent means for our data and digital lives, and how to build and use technology consentfully Explicit Harms of Non-Explicit ImagesChayn's research on how any image, nude or ordinary, can cause harm once it is shared without consent

Common questions

Frequently asked questions

What is Consent Awareness Week?

Canada's national campaign for dialogue, education, and action around consent. Created by High School Too and Possibility Seeds and held annually during the third week of September (September 21–25 in 2026), it invites campuses, communities, workplaces, and organizations to have thoughtful, affirming, intersectional, and age-appropriate conversations about consent as a cornerstone of all relationships, not just intimate ones.[4]

When is it held, and why is it in September?

The third week of September. That timing coincides with the “Red Zone,” the early weeks of the school year when reports of sexual violence rise on campuses, so prevention and awareness matter most right at the start of the year.[4]

Who is it for?

Everyone. There are dedicated guides for colleges and universities, communities, unions, and workplaces, as well as a full K–12 guide on our High School Too microsite. All of it is free and adaptable to your context.

What are Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and CHOICE?

The first is Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, a right of Indigenous nations that flows from their inherent right to self-determination and sovereignty. It concerns decisions affecting their lands, territories, and communities, and it is a nation-led process rather than a single yes-or-no. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms this right rather than granting it.[5][6] The second is CHOICE, developed by Possibility Seeds, which describes the conditions needed for consent:

  • Chosen freely. Without pressure, guilt, fear, manipulation, or someone wearing you down.
  • Have the information you need. You understand what you're agreeing to and can ask questions.
  • Okay to change. You can change your mind at any time, and so can the other person: I can, they can, we can.
  • It's a sure yes. A clear, willing “yes,” not silence, uncertainty, freezing, or “I guess.”
  • Continuous. Ongoing check-ins; yes to one thing isn't yes to another, or to the same thing another time.
  • Expressed, not assumed. Communicated through words or another understood form, never guessed from past experiences, relationships, clothing, or body language alone.

CHOICE helps young people understand what a caring, freely given “yes” requires.

Can we adapt these materials for our own community?

The content on this page is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, so you may adapt it for non-commercial use with attribution, and it is released under the same licence. The BRAVE Model© is the exception: it is separately licensed and should be used unadapted, with attribution to Farrah Khan.[1]

What if someone discloses harm during an event we are running?

Assume it will happen, because raising this subject reliably prompts disclosures. Brief whoever is facilitating beforehand, have your local support services written down rather than recalled from memory, and make sure the facilitator knows they are not expected to counsel or investigate. The We Believe You approach above is a good primer for responding well in the moment.

Where's the guide for schools?

The full K–12 guide lives on our High School Too microsite, with age-appropriate activities for every grade: highschooltoo.ca/consentawarenessweek.

Support: If you or someone you know has been subjected to sexual violence, you can connect with a local sexual assault centre or support service. In an emergency, contact your local emergency number.

References

Sources for the frameworks, figures, and claims on this page. Numbers match the citations above.

  1. [1] The BRAVE Model©: A trauma-informed framework for responding to disclosure. The original work of Farrah Khan (1998). Licensed CC BY-NC-ND; use unadapted, non-commercially, with attribution. farrahkhan.ca/thebravemodel

  2. [2] Possibility Seeds. (n.d.). BRAVE Model©. possibilityseeds.ca/brave

  3. [3] Canadian Women's Foundation. (2022). New study: Less than half of people in Canada know what sexual consent means. canadianwomen.org

  4. [4] Possibility Seeds. (n.d.). Consent Awareness Week. possibilityseeds.ca/consent-awareness-week

  5. [5] Institute for Human Rights and Business. (2022). What is Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)? ihrb.org

  6. [6] United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Articles 3, 4, 19, 32). un.org

  7. [7] Konsmo, E. M. & Pacheco, A. K. (2016). Violence on the land, violence on our bodies. Women's Earth Alliance and Native Youth Sexual Health Network. landbodydefense.org

  8. [8] King, H. & Pasternak, S. (2019). Land back: A Yellowhead Institute red paper. Yellowhead Institute. redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Consent Awareness Week is a national initiative created by High School Too and Possibility Seeds, held annually the third week of September. This page's content may be shared and adapted for non-commercial use, with attribution, under the same licence. Note: BRAVE Model© and the framework are the original work of Farrah Khan, separately licensed (CC BY-NC-ND); it should be used unadapted, with attribution.