White Ribbon March 2019

On the 25th of November, our Year 11 Social Studies class participated in a Social Action event supporting White Ribbon Day to help spread awareness about Family Violence. We realise that Family Violence is a major human rights issue and everyone needs to know about this because it is getting out of hand.

We have learnt about the statistics about Family Violence which helped me understand more about this topic. I found it interesting that 48% of the time, police head out for issues on Family Violence. It could be physical abuse, verbal abuse, financial abuse, etc, they all still count as abuse.

We participated in a march to raise more awareness. We marched around Glen Innes because it is in our community and because I can see that Glen Innes needs this kind of help to spread awareness.  It was cool to see all the bystanders joining in on the march, it was also inspiring to hear people from our community share their personal stories on how Family Violence affected them. This helped me understand more about other people’s perspectives and experiences about Family Violence.

I think that this Social Action helped me realise that people need to be woken up and to see how hard us students are trying to make a change and help people to see that Family Violence is a big problem that needs to be looked at more. From my perspective as a student, I see myself and many other students making a stand for those people that are too scared to speak. All voices are heard, especially from P.I’s, teenagers, men, etc.  

It was a great experience participating in this march. I really hope that we will be able to do more of these Social Actions in the future. I hope we were able to gain people’s attention and that they would be able to support our message that Family Violence is not okay.

#RiseAboveFamilyViolence Thank you for your time :) Talya Tamariki  ~ Year 11 Tāmaki College

"It was encouraging to see so many young men and women making a stand against domestic violence from Tāmaki college. They are our future and with young adults of my own, there are stories that we still haven't heard and I know, domestic violence is a respecter of none. Thank you our future leaders." Carla Perese HEART Change Agent, Pastor, Community Worker