Thursday, January 7, 2016

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Change hearts and minds

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 04:19 AM PST

Changing Hearst and Minds, preventing violence against BME women and girls‘An essential resource for schools’.

To mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign Southall Black Sisters have launched 'Changing Hearts and Minds – Preventing Violence against Black and Minority Ethnic Women and Girls – An Education Pack'.

'Changing Hearts and Minds' is a free education resource pack written by Southall Black Sisters (SBS) specifically for teachers so they can undertake prevention work on violence against black and minority ethnic (BME) women and girls.

It provides specialist understanding and awareness raising of the key issues that affect BME women and girls experiencing violence and abuse and shows how teachers can prevent, protect and support young people who may be affected or vulnerable to such forms of abuse.

The programme has been developed so that it allows teachers to explore the wider issues of gender stereotypes, gender inequality, gender expectations, misogyny and healthy and respectful relationships, and to then focus on issues which specifically affecting BME women and girls such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), so called 'honour' based violence (HBV) and the impact of religion and culture.

The work is encompassed within human rights, violence against women and girls, intersectional discrimination and black feminist frameworks.

This education pack has been carefully designed to ensure that teachers are provided with effective and simple tools to ensure 'outstanding' teaching and learning takes place through complimenting PSHE, Citizenship and Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Aspects of learning.

The pack contains lesson plans which use the accelerated learning cycle pedagogy by Alistair Smith (2007) and is supported by power-points, work booklets and is accompanied by a series of short films made by a group of young BME women – the SBS’s Ambassadors for Change – to back up the content and delivery of the education resource pack.

One of the SBS Ambassadors, remarking on the project, said: "Learning about these issues helped me to be more confident in talking about violence and abuse, whereas before I was a bit hesitant."

Another said: "Just in general violence and abuse aren't issues that are really discussed and I think young people should become more aware of these issues because these issues are experienced by a lot of people in society and they might be exposed to those things in future and it might be good for them to gain knowledge of it now."

And "When we started the project there was not a lot of awareness about violence and abuse specifically towards women and girls, especially among the younger generation like people our age and I think by becoming ambassadors we were able to spread awareness and give people more understanding of the issues."

Anita Bhardwaj, Schools Prevention Worker, said: "Developing an active ambassador programme for young people to lead on the issues of violence against black and minority ethnic (BME) women and girls is prevention at a potent level.

"Observing the confidence with which young people were able to work alongside their teachers, create the short films and present [them] to political delegates with such passion and understanding of the importance of eradicating gendered violence, clarifies the need for developing more young people-led prevention and awareness raising campaigns."

Policy, research and fundraising consultant, Hannana Siddiqui, explained: "The education pack is based on 36 years of experience by Southall Black Sisters of working with black and minority ethnic (BME) women and girls facing gendered violence.

"It is an essential resource for schools enabling them to educate, and change attitudes and behaviour on what is often considered a 'culturally or religiously sensitive' subject which many teachers find difficult to tackle.

"The pack gives them the tools and the confidence they need to make transformative change by preventing violence against BME women and girls in future generations."

'Changing Hearts and Minds' is available as a free download: to get your copy, click here.