My name is Bruna Alves Bento, I’m a student at Drumchapel High School and the President of the Anti-racism Club. My goal for our school is to create an inclusive and safe environment to everyone. However, I also have a bigger goal, and that is to give every single young person a role model and have real knowledge about each other which will help us to understand each other better.
“This is the beginning of this huge change and includes every single one of us.”
Removing Inequalities
Nowadays, our society is like a building, where we have people on the top and people in the bottom, and what I want to do is create a nice and peaceful neighbourhood where all have the same amount of help and opportunities. I’m at the beginning of this huge change that includes every single one of us. We have to educate ourselves before educating others.
I have created the website for our club and created some educational PowerPoints. We also have an Instagram account where we can share and support others more easily. Our main point of the social media is to help other students with racism in their schools.
“We, as a club, have written to the Scottish Government to make decolonisation of the curriculum mandatory.”
Role Models
Our club secretary has sent a letter that we, as a club, have written to the Scottish Government to make decolonisation of the curriculum mandatory. We believe it is important that every young person can see themselves in the classroom, have role models and have a sense of belonging. If we see the artists, inventors, scientists, writers, mathematicians, sport people, chiefs and all the activities of a wider range of people this will help stop racism. To make it mandatory, it means all schools in Scotland need to make this change.
“We believe it is important that every young person can see themselves in the classroom, have role models and have a sense of belonging.”
Work so far
Last year we had an Anti-racism week, we had some events to build anti-racist culture in our school. We made orange our colour and made orange ribbons which many teachers and students are still wearing showing their support.
At the beginning of this year, we started to work on our school board where we can share a tiny percentage of what we are doing in our club to bring more awareness of our club and to encourage other students to join.
In our club room, our safe space, one of our members gave the idea of having a suggestions box so we can share our thoughts of events or things that we can reform through the club. We are also making a list of topics to discuss. So far, we have spoken about 9/11, religion, The Little Mermaid film and the world cup. We are learning from each other, learning to be more open and understanding of other people’s beliefs.
“It is important that every school has a club to make more people feel safe and part of their school.”
First Languages
We have had the opportunity of teaching our first language to other young people in the school. For example, Arabic and Portuguese. This helps bring more awareness of other languages to the school, removing the unknown that can lead to discrimination and also for the students that speak these languages a feeling of belonging.
Sharing the LearningWe also want to share and learn from other schools. It is important that every school has a club to make more people feel safe and part of their school. We took part in two webinars for Education Scotland and will be running a stall for Glasgow City Council PARTIE (Promoting Anti-Racism In Education) event. We hope to do more as it is so important to share, learn and support each other.
The club has given us confidence, we are learning from each other about being anti-racist, we are more aware of other people’s cultures, and we feel anti-racism is being taken seriously in our school. We are feeling safer, proud, happier, stronger and most importantly -heard.
