A national pro-life club for homeschoolers has been started by two homeschooled students in affiliation with Student Life Link and Toronto Right to Life. The co-founders are Alexandra Jezierski, organizer of the Letters4Life campaign in support of Motion 312 and 2013 summer student at The Interim, as well as Sarah Blake, a youth board member of Toronto Right to Life.
The Homeschool Pro-Life Action Network, launched at Toronto Right to Life’s annual general meeting on Nov. 1, connects homeschoolers online using a web site (homeschool.studentlifelink.ca) and a mailing list. The web site will have an idea for pro-life activism every two weeks, among other articles. The first challenge suggests writing a pro-life letter to the local MP and involving the local homeschool, church, or youth group. It provides a form letter homeschoolers may choose to use. “All of our content is meant to cater specifically to homeschoolers and the challenges they face in their more isolated situations,” Sarah Blake told The Interim in an interview by email.
Toronto Right to Life has helped facilitate the meetings and develop ideas while providing the web site and email infrastructure. The club is affiliated to TRTL through Student Life Link and has also received assistance from the National Campus Life Network. The organizers will be keeping the membership up to date about these pro-life groups’ events and are open to other pro-life initiatives that are practical for homeschoolers.
The club is in its early stages – it is spreading the word to pro-life and homeschooling groups, as well as pro-life media, and recruiting members for the mailing list. The organizers hope to add a forum as the group grows so that homeschoolers can interact with each other directly. In the future, there might also be a need for regional coordinators in different areas of the country.
Blaise Alleyne of TRTL told The Interim that there was a need for a pro-life homeschool club, as the majority of the initiatives currently available to support pro-life students “assumes that you have a school campus.” Through the action of Student Life Link and the NCLN, TRTL already knew there was great value in helping young pro-lifers become more active. There is great potential to motivate these “outgoing” and “interested” homeschooled students to “become leaders on a larger scale.”
“Homeschoolers have so much to contribute to the pro-life movement,” Blake said. “My experience is that pro-life homeschooling teenagers are very strongly grounded and passionate in their beliefs. Homeschoolers can be active in all of the basic forms of activism…the club is a way for them to feel more united in their efforts and to give them the resources necessary to be as successful as possible.”
