A Message from Renée Vaugeois: Honouring 21 Years of Community and the Path Ahead
July 17, 2026 | Edmonton, AB
On March 25, 2005, I walked into the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights (JHC) as its sole employee, working 20 hours a week with a budget under $50,000 to move Edmonton forward as a Human Rights City. Today, as I share my decision to step down as Executive Director, I look back on an over 21-year journey that has fundamentally reshaped my life and, I hope, the fabric of human rights education and advocacy in Canada.
What began as a small, local initiative in Edmonton has grown into a thriving, resilient national organization. JHC now boasts an annual budget of $2 million and a brilliant team of staff and contractors across the country. Together, we have built a nationally respected lead institution in human rights education, dialogue, and grassroots movement-building.
I am incredibly proud of what the team at JHC has achieved over these years. Along the way, I have been honoured to work alongside incredible people including staff, board members, advisors, members, artists, and volunteers. Together, we have launched major arts-based storytelling initiatives like Paint the Rails and the Justice4Reel film festival, produced numerous documentaries, research reports and education resources, traveled across Alberta to facilitate critical dialogue on child welfare, Indigenous rights, and healthcare, and worked tirelessly to build bridges across the prairie provinces to strengthen extra-provincial collaboration and advocacy. We also mobilized the massive YEG Community Response to COVID-19, supporting over 169,000 neighbors, and planned major international gatherings. In 2023, we hosted a 10-day global conference engaging over 1,000 people to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
JHC has been a light for many. Our work has been centred on lived experience and human dignity, focusing on building relationships as the cornerstone of living human rights as values. We have facilitated countless spaces for difficult truths, reconciliation, and peace-building. I am profoundly grateful for the journey I’ve shared with JHC, and I am excited to see where the organization goes in the future.
As the organization opens its search for a new Executive Director to write JHC’s next visionary chapter, I look forward to continuing to be a part of JHC’s efforts to build communities that embrace and embed human rights as practice and principle.
To the Board, our staff, our members, and countless community volunteers who have trusted me over the last two decades: thank you. You have been my grounding.
Please watch within the next few weeks for the formal launch of the search for a new leader to help take JHC into a new chapter.
For inquiries regarding the leadership transition, please contact Andrew Lam, President of the Board of Directors at president@jhcentre.org.
