Former Vanier student Jarrah Hodge placed first in the Best Feminist Blog category of the 2011 Canadian Weblog Awards.Hodge鈥檚 blog, Gender Focus www.gender-focus.com, won the category last week after almost a month of evaluation by a jury made up of other Canadian bloggers.鈥淭his is a really big honour,鈥� said Hodge, 鈥淚鈥檝e been running Gender Focus for just over two years now and it means a lot to have our work recognized.鈥漈he jury ranked nominated blogs on a series of criteria including accessibility, interactivity and design; attention to detail; and timeliness, originality and clarity of content.Hodge, who graduated from Vanier Secondary School in 2003, went on to graduate from UBC's Women鈥檚 Studies program. Gender Focus covers politics, pop culture, and current events from a feminist perspective, with a particular aim of covering Canadian content not always addressed in other feminist blogs.鈥淲e cover a huge range of issues, because practically everything has a gender angle to it,鈥� said Hodge, 鈥淎nd we know not all feminists or their allies share the same interests.鈥漇ome particular stories that Hodge found were very popular in 2011 were an analysis of Movember, a feminist guide to Twitter, suggested questions for your federal election candidate and discussion of ads depicting domestic violence that were used to promote an Edmonton hair salon.Hodge pointed out that neither she nor the other writers make any money from Gender Focus; the blog is solely on a volunteer basis.  鈥淚t鈥檚 just myself and a team of amazing volunteer contributors from across Canada sharing our perspectives on feminist and gender issues,鈥� explained Hodge. In the coming year, Hodge hopes to continue to explore a variety of topics on her blog. And she鈥檚 also in the process of developing a series of web videos answering frequently asked questions about feminism.Although she lives in Vancouver, Hodge returns to the Comox Valley frequently to visit her family.