Dare to be Aware

Educate people on ways to protect themselves and feel more comfortable and safe in public places. We hope to make the people in our community and our school feel safer when they are out and about. Particularly when alone or in a vulnerable position. Spread awareness on what to look out for and how to be less vulnerable. Also, what to do if you are in a dangerous situation.

Our Social Issue

Young people feeling unsafe in public. We go to school in the city centre. As young women, we are often in possibly harmful situations. We want to ensure that the students and staff in our school community are capable of protecting themselves. We would all often get public transport to and from school. We want them to be able to recognize unsafe situations and be able to cope with them.

Why We Chose It

We chose to do our YSI project about personal safety. We decided on this social issue as we all go to school in the city centre, and are often taking public transport- often in the darkness. We mutually agreed that we had all felt unsafe at some stage, when commuting to and from school or other areas. We strongly believed that we needed to educate ourselves and others in our school about how to protect ourselves in dangerous situations, should they arise. Acquiring the knowledge to defend yourself is a life skill, and could extricate yourself or others from harm.

Our Goal

All of our actions are leading up to one main goal; running self-defense classes in the school for our TY students. We believe that this would make students in TY feel safer and more secure. Ideally, we would hold them for the whole school, however the obstacle of state exams and cost prevent us from doing so. Instead, we are going to ask the TY students to note the two most important pieces of advice or information they learn. We will then put all the information gathered into a booklet that can be given to all other students.

Our Innovative Action

To raise awareness for our project we have taken actions such as emailing newsletters to students and staff, sticking posters around the school, creating an Instagram page and making intercom announcements. To fundraise for our project, we have held a bake sale and we will do more fundraising such as a photo booth later on in the year. In order to take action on our project, we will be organising self-defence classes for TY students to partake in, making information leaflets. As well as that, we are hoping to invite speakers to the school to educate our students and staff.

Our Impact

We believe that our YSI project has been very successful in conveying the importance of personal safety, particularly among teenage girls. Our social media page has accumulated a large following. Here we regularly notify our followers about events taking place, upload behind the scenes photos of our rehearsals, and the work done in class. Earlier this month, we conducted a survey within the school, asking questions regarding the students’ personal experiences with feeling unsafe in the city centre and when using public transport. We then displayed these results in a presentation which was shown in Tutor Time to all classes.