STAND Canada is Canada’s leading organization for youth-led anti-genocide advocacy. As the McGill chapter, we hold fundraising events to benefit the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation (http://www.valentinoachakdeng.org) to help fund a school complex for conflict-affected children in South Sudan. In addition, we seek to inform the McGill community of the ongoing violence in the DRC, and the role that
minerals play in financing and perpetuating the conflict. Spreading awareness is our first step. From there we hope to establish a base of interest and concern that will allow us to take the initiative further by building a solidarity movement around responsible mining and promoting a culture of sustainability on campus. In the long term, our aim is to help shape McGill investment and purchasing policy, and beyond that, influence Canadian legislation surrounding responsible mining practices, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies, and the supply chain transparency and due diligence requirements of Canadian companies working in the extractive sector.
