April is Sexual Assault Awareness month and Good Night Out Vancouver has partnered with local breweries to educate the public in the most refreshing way.
The Brewers Row Charity Collaboration Brew is an annual project that brings together craft breweries along Port Moody’s Brewers Row to create a beer that raises both awareness and funds for a local non-profit.
Good Night Out Vancouver coordinator Stacey Forrester said the group had the idea to create a Good Night Out beer last year but put the idea on the backburner until earlier this year when they approached Port Moody’s Twin Sails brewery with a proposal.
“We put together a proposal and we happened to get it into Twin Sails around the time they were considering people to make the charity beer for,” she said, adding that the group wasn’t even aware of the project.
“The links between booze and gender-based violence have been long established but the activities of Good Night Out in the past year have really enforced that there are conditions when people are drinking that really allow the normalization of not asking for consent,” Forrester said. “The key to this is that the messaging on all of the cans is a really teachable moment and we thought it was just a really great way to normalize talking about consent in social situations.”
The beer, which was launched at an event over the weekend, is sold in four packs and each can includes a different fact. Forrester said that the cans include a sticker that when peeled off reveals a different fact or trivia — including the fact that on average police in Canada receive more than 500,000 reports of sexual assault every year. Of those, it’s estimated that one-in-five involve drugs, and alcohol is the most common drug used.
“Some are trivia, some are more serious, some include links to sex assault support services,” she said, adding that the cans also include the hashtag #nowyougno.
“We’re really hoping that people photograph it and share it and tag us on Instagram and really turn it into a bit of an educational campaign until the beer is all gone.”
