COLLECTIVE ACTION FOR RELATIONSHIPS AND SEXUALITY EDUCATION (RSE) |
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What would you like to see Bloom-ED focus on next? |
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Getting a collective action group together has been a slow process. However, we hope we align with your desire to see relationships and sexuality education become more easily accessible to all Australians. Please take 2-minutes to complete this short survey and let us know where we should be focusing our efforts in the next 1-2 years! |
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The Bloom-ED Team has been busy trying to address the most common myths that come up when people talk about RSE. Check out the new page on our website below. If you have any comments or ideas on how to improve this page, please don't hesitate to get in touch. |
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Project spotlight: 'Crushed But Ok' |
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Click on video below to check out an Episode 1 of the 'Crushed but okay' campaign |
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Bloom-Ed recently caught up with Angela Grant, Head of Program Innovation and Design at the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, to chat about the Foundation’s innovative new campaign, 'Crushed But Ok'. It focuses on practical tips to help young men manage rejection in dating. What prompted the Alannah and Madeline Foundation to focus on young men for this project? We know that perpetration of ‘technology-facilitated harms of a sexual nature’ can start with males in adolescence. Concerningly, there are major gaps in existing resources and support by/for young men to help them manage the complexities and challenges of being online. In September 2020, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation together with academics from Swinburne University of Technology, was awarded a Commonwealth Grant, through the Online Safety Grants Program (OSGP) administered by the eSafety Commissioner, to deliver the ‘Improve Your Play’ project. The project sought to deliver resources that help young men navigate the complexities of intimate relationships online, identify gender inequity and power imbalances, improve their personal awareness and capacity to deal with rejection, aid healthy peer group interactions about intimate relationships, and conversations that normalise rejection. How is the 'Crushed But Ok' campaign different from other youth healthy relationships campaigns? It advocates for healthier online intimate relationships, where rejection can be talked about without stigma. This program involved the development of four videos where Australian influencers (social media content creators) aged 17-21 react to social media posts and direct message (DM) screenshots involving rejection. The videos are distributed through a social media campaign on Instagram, that included paid advertising targeted to young men aged 15-17 as well as distribution via the participating influencers. The campaign is supported by an online resource kit that encourages young people to normalise their experiences of rejection by sharing their experiences of rejection and/or creating content online (such as making a meme, or sharable image). |
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The intervention seeks to build young men’s capacity to manage their feelings in response to perceived rejection and to model respectful and ethical online communication. We adopted agile and human-centred design approaches to co-design, in collaboration with a diverse group of young people aged 15-21. This participatory approach is particularly significant given that young men have been a hard-to-reach cohort for sexuality and relationship educators. How successful has the campaign been and what are some of the measures of that? We exceeded the reach target of 10,000. 1.5 million on social media and 2,853,221 total reach including other news and broadcast media. The campaign was well received with high levels of audience engagement and industry recognition. The project Won Gold at the Melbourne Design Awards 2022 for best mobile based marketing campaign with contracted agency and also received a Good Design Award 2022 for the Communication Category. It also won a w3 Award, which honours creative excellence on the web. Co-production was an integral part of this campaign. What were AMF’s key learnings about this process? Limitations in the diversity of youth participants were offset by the depth, duration and quality of youth partnership. A core group of six youth participants were consulted throughout the co-design process, and in late 2021, these young people were employed by AMF as paid Creative Advisors.
This process exemplified the overarching challenges of balancing leadership with engagement in co-design. While the young people in this project had considerable lived experience, they did not have access to systemic, evidence-based insights into the problems posed by online relationships and intimate communication in digital environments.
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What are the plans for the campaign and how can RSE educators and schools use it? We are entering phase two of the program development. We are having a workshop in December with the design team to see how we can bring the next phase to broader audiences. If you have questions, feel free to email Angela directly via Angela.Grant@amf.org.au Pictured: Angela Grant (far right) with two members of her team at a recent event. | | |
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Recent advocacy effortsProposed revisions to the WA curriculum related to consent |
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The Australian Curriculum version 9 (endorsed by all state Education Ministers on 1 April 2022) includes changes to the Health and Physical Education curriculum content related to consent. In response to this, within Western Australia, the School Curriculum and Standards Authority proposed changes to the state's Health and Physical Education curriculum to include the concept of consent. Response from Bloom-ED to the public consultation: It is pleasing to see the issue of consent has been included in proposed changes to the WA curriculum. However, the focus area of 'relationships and sexuality education' is much broader than a few lessons each year regarding consent. Bloom-ED believe it would be ideal if some of the examples that are provided throughout the HPE curriculum include more 'relationships and sexuality education' exemplars. Teaching and learning about consent is also more than 'strategies.' Students should be taught about things that can impact their ability to give/receive consent (e.g. power, gender, privilege, intoxication), how to be an ethical bystander, how to seek help, and the law. The curriculum also needs to acknowledge the online context in which relationships can happen. |
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Support the campaign: Classify Consent |
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Please check out the recent campaign from Consent Labs to call out the lack of consent in Australian media. You can also access their Consent Toolkit here. |
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Help a doctoral research student |
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| | No shame: Why we need to talk about sex | | |
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| | Understanding, monitoring and responding to resistance and backlash | | |
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| | RSE: The evidence New evidence from the UK about the positive impact of school-based RSE. | | |
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| | Life imprisonment for 'stealthing' in South Australia | | |
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| | Australian parents support RSE | | |
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| | New South Wales takes historic first step towards better health for LGBTQ people | | |
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| | These accessible resources tell you all you need to know about the cervical screening process | | |
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| | This collection of drawings have been co-designed with young people to be accurate, culturally inclusive, and represent natural variations in bodies. Above all, they are ‘friendly’. | | |
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We want to celebrate, share and make aware. As part of Bloom-Ed's mission to create collective action for RSE, we would love to showcase the fabulous work that is happening around Australia. We want to spotlight any work that supports efforts to provide evidence-based RSE to Australians - be this through homes, schools, community groups, or other means. How can you help? Let us know if there is campaign, petition, consultation or event that we should now about. We'd love to share it. Have you been involved in any media, or read a great RSE-related article lately? If you have engaged with media regarding RSE in the last 1-2 years, please send us the links through so we can add it to a new page we are creating on our website. Similarly, if you have read a great article, please send it our way!
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So who is Bloom-ED? We are a collective of teachers, researchers, sexologists, students, parents and activists who operate as an alliance - in conjunction with other organisations - to advocate for comprehensive RSE. Learn more about our hopes for RSE here. At the current time our focus is on improving RSE delivery in Australia, but watch this space... |
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SPREAD THE WORD. Forward this email and encourage colleagues to subscribe... |
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