I Never Ask For It : Nagoya International School

* Thrilled to report *

High School Action Heroes !

A pilot programme by Blank Noise, towards building Action Heroes at school; a community of high school students identifying, examining, and building capacity to tackle sexual violence.

Blank Noise licenses I Never Ask For It, to students of Nagoya International School, Japan.

Five, all new, high school Action Heroes have signed up to build I Never Ask For It, Blank Noise dialogues in Nagoya. The programme will run between now until January 2018.

Initiated by their teacher, and Action Hero, Tulika Bathija, the initiative will be student led. Tulika is from Mumbai and lives in Nagoya now. She has worked extensively in the field of human rights and peace building through classroom and educational initiatives. Tulika had reached out , and wanted to introduce her students to the initiatives here.

In Tulika's words:

"I had read about the work that Blank Noise does, on social media. But at my previous school, my colleague, History teacher, when she was doing a unit on women empowerment shared that young boys from my grade 8 class strongly believed that women are sometimes responsible for incidents of sexual violence and harassment. If they are more cautious about the dress that they wear, it is a preventive measure. I have heard of instances where teachers found boys protecting girls on school trips or suggesting the teacher that the girl be asked to change her outfit, adorable! I have witnessed this conditioning first hand. Having seen these attitudes ingrained in children, it only makes sense why the climate of sexual violence exists. Since I came to Nagoya, I also realised that many boys at school think that feminist is a bad word. There is a growing sense of resentment toward feminism as a way of life and ideology. It is also because men don't feel that they are invited in a conversation. More importantly, our school lives in a bubble in Japan. Japanese students are very few; however, the mixed cultural environment -- Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Portuguese, Dutch, French, American, Canadian will allow a deeper and richer engagement with this subject, with different students sharing their experiences from their cultures, finding commonalities and patterns. And who knows? They might take this forward too in their countries? "

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Are you in high school?

Are you a teacher?

To create an Action Hero high school, do send an email of interest at actionhero@blanknoise.org

This is a pilot programme and will be offered to schools in 2018