Amnesty International Conference
On the 29th of September, 12 students from The Sixth Form at The Purbeck School went over to the Lytchett Minister School, to attend the Beyond This Conference, sponsored by Amnesty International. Many schools from across the south and south west also joined us, and lots of schools online as well! In total there was around 110 schools and so we were very lucky to be there.
The conference was to discuss and debate misogyny, attitudes towards women and sexual harassment in society and in schools.
There were a range of speakers from groups or lower school students, to a female beat boxer who all spoke about their experiences in an honest and engaging
way. All of the speakers were very influential and very informative but there were three speakers that stuck out to us; the first one was Gemma Aitchison who spoke amazingly on rape culture and dissected the idea of consent, Peter Radford (one of the organisers of the event) spoke on how we need to fix our system and society rather than women, and finally, Hibo Wardere spoke on her experiences with Female Genital Mutilation and misogyny which was both inspiring and deeply hard hitting with some of the unpleasant truths of the world being revealed.
All of the students present were asked how they could bring change about in their own schools based on the ideas generated as part of the day. We look forward to sharing our new understanding with the Bold Voices group.