Embracing diversity
by Educate Magazine April 7, 2014 · All News / Secondary School News
A group of sixth formers who live in a small rural town in Merseyside have launched a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of valuing cultural diversity.
The group from Rainford High Technology College joined up with national charity Fixers, which supports 16-25 year olds in their quest to address issues they care about, and their campaign featured on television programme ITV Granada Reports.
The group say they are eager to learn to respect, tolerate, appreciate and enjoy other cultures – and they want to encourage other young people to do the same. They have decided to make a short film with Fixers to get their message across.
“Rainford is very rural and sheltered so there aren’t many different cultures, and about 99 per cent of students at our school are white British,” said Fixer Annie Jones, 16.
“I think that at a younger age we should be encouraged to embrace and mix with different cultures so that we are never in a position where we might become ignorant.”
As part of their project, Fixers arranged for the girls to travel to an inner-city school in Liverpool to meet pupils there.
Fellow Fixer Hannah Tabernacle, 17, added: “I really hope that we can change things with our Fixers campaign and try to make people a little bit more open-minded.”
Staff at Rainford High Technology College are supporting their students’ Fixers project.
Principal Ian Young said: “This project is so important because issues of prejudice and racism come out of ignorance and a lack of understanding.
“We want tomorrow’s communities to be stronger than today’s and this, I think, is a very important way of moving that forward.”
Fixers works with young people across the UK. Each Fixer is supported to create the resources they need to make their chosen project a success, with creative help from media professionals to make their own promotional material, such as films, websites or print work.
Fixers has already supported more than 10,400 young people across the UK to have an authentic voice in their community.
