Our latest guest blog comes from our good friends at Diversity Role Models. As part of Emerald’s commitment to supporting LGBT community facing schemes and organisations, we are delighted to be officially partnering with them, to support their important work in Britain’s schools.

Diversity Role Models and Emerald Life

Like Emerald Life, we at Diversity Role Models believe in putting the community at the heart of everything we do. By taking volunteer role models – both LGBT and allies – into classrooms across the UK, we use the power of our community’s stories to tackle the blight of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.

Sharing personal stories is a powerful way of building young people’s understanding and empathy. It helps LGBT students feel confident, and creates the allies of the future by ensuring that their classmates understand, accept and welcome the differences they notice in others.

Ben

We’re delighted that with Emerald Life’s support we can make a difference in their local community. Thanks to their generosity, we’re delivering our innovative whole-school package in a school in Southwark, the borough where Emerald Life HQ is based. 

With their funding we’re going to be able to make progress in every part of the school community.

Students

We’ll deliver our innovative and award-winning student workshops to one year group, including taking a role model from Emerald Life into the school. Working with at least 100 young people over the course of the day, we’ll develop their empathy and turn them into passionate advocates for diversity.

As a result of our student workshops:

  • 90% of young people will say they will support a friend if they came out;
  • 80% of young people will say they will challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic behaviour in future.

Staff

Having staff who understand how to create inclusive school environments is a sustainable way to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. By running face-to-face training and e-learning to make every member of staff an LGBT champion, we’ll help the school to build on the momentum of our student workshops.

As a result of our staff training and e-learning:

  • 80% of staff will better understand the issues LGBT young people face;
  • 80% of staff will have increased confidence in tackling HBT bullying.

Governors and Parents

Just 15% of primary and 20% of secondary teachers believe that governors demonstrate clear leadership when it comes to tackling homophobic bullying (Stonewall, The Teachers Report 2014). It’s clear that we need to work with governors if we want ensure that LGBT inclusion is taken seriously in our schools.

Kathryn _ Navah

And governors play a crucial role in providing a link between parents and a school. By giving them the knowledge and the confidence to talk intelligibly about the importance of our work, they can spread the message to other parents in the playground. 

As a result of our governor training:

  • 80% of governors will have increased knowledge of HBT bullying;
  • 80% of governors will better understand their role in tackling HBT bullying.

Making a difference together

We’re so excited about everything that we’re going to achieve together with Emerald Life. Their support is going to create a step-change in LGBT inclusion in the school that we work with.

We can’t wait to keep you all updated on our progress through the blog, and bring it to life for you with some of the new stories that we create as we go!

To find out more about Diversity Role Models, or to support them yourselves, visit their website at www.diversityrolemodels.org