On Tuesday 10 December Year 13 had the opportunity to attend the Safer Sutton Conference, a new initiative for this year made possible by Mrs Harvey and the teams at Sutton Women’s Centre and SACCO. They were also joined on the day by Sixth Form students from a number of other local schools.
Last year, Sutton Women’s Centre worked with Reclaim Sutton’s Streets and Roehampton University to conduct a survey on women and girls’ feelings of safety in the borough. Following on from this survey, they held a conference on Building a Safer Sutton for Women and Girls and now would like to introduce a women’s safety charter in the borough. The women’s safety charter would include women having a voice in all planning decisions in the borough; working with local transport hubs to ensure women’s safety; training local businesses and organisations and supporting them to implement policies on domestic abuse; zero misogyny and sexual harassment; and organising different initiatives across the borough to raise awareness of violence against women and girls. Furthermore, SACCO is embarking on a body of work together with our partners to encourage the young people of our community to thrive, by creating a supportive environment promoting empowerment and creating a space for their voices.
During the conference the students heard about how they can keep themselves safe, how they can help others to feel safe, what a healthy relationship looks like and the signs to look for to spot an unhealthy relationship, plus they heard about knife crime and heard the voices of some survivors. During the day the students heard from a number of inspiring speakers:
Dawn Dines, CEO and founder of Stamp Out Spiking, spoke about how young people can keep themselves and their friends safe on a night out.
Kamaria Ahmad from Stop Hate UK gave bystander/upstander training Christabel Yeboah, one of the Founders & Chief Vision Officer of the first national Gender-based Violence Support Service for Black femmes in the UK, gave a talk on ‘Your Voice, Your Power: Reclaiming Strength After Silence’ Jesse Ngoma, Youth Engagement Officer and Sarah Lumgair, Operations Manager from People Arise Now, spoke about knife crime, Michael Conroy, founder and director of Men At Work CIC, spoke on male allyship.
