Talking points for our future leaders
AS THE new school year begins, the Maccabi GB Education teams are launching their new educational content and resuming two leadership programmes for young people. Streetwise, a partnership between Maccabi GB and CST, was established in 2005. Since then, the project has worked nationally with Jewish schools and community organisations, enhancing the personal safety and personal development of young Jewish people to support their physical and emotional wellbeing. Last academic year, the project delivered 562 individual sessions, reaching 15,245 young people in 45 schools.
Alongside Streetwise, Maccabi GB also manages Stand Up! Education Against Discrimination (Stand Up!), an interfaith educational project established in 2016, as a partnership with the CST, receiving support from Tell Mama, Galop, True Vision and Kick It Out, among others. The project engaged 11,400 young people during the past academic year, and brings Muslim and Jewish facilitators together to the classroom, educating young people about racism and discrimination, with a specific focus on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. While these two educational projects have operated in Jewish and mainstream schools for years, both the Streetwise and Stand Up! teams have experienced the most intense school term between May and July 2021 and have encountered many new challenges, which will shape the conversations with young people for years to come.
The pandemic, multiple lockdowns and school closures have intensified young people’s vulnerabilities. Spending time at home and mostly online meant young people were exposed to layers of toxic content, leaving them at the receiving end of cyber-bullying, radicalisation and grooming, all of which affect a young person’s development and mental health.
The lack of interaction in a physical school environment also meant many young people were unable to access the resources and support needed. This was evident in the conversations facilitators were having with young people through online sessions and on returning to the classrooms. During the last spring term, the team received an extraordinary demand for sessions on anti-bullying and antidiscrimination, particularly in key stage three (school years seven and eight). These young people have had little secondary experience through 2020, and therefore hadn’t fully developed their own personal and social boundaries, leading to anti-social behaviour between peers and towards teachers. Our workshops focused on providing tools and strategies aimed at re-establishing a respectful school environment, while also challenging all forms of discrimination.
Young people have also used the internet over lockdown to share anonymous stories of surviving sexual harassment and abuse through the Everyone’s Invited platform. Streetwise directly responded to this by creating consent sessions for every year group in key stage three and four.
This academic year, the team will be offering workshops on personal development, relationships education and relationships and sex education, which will allow for continuous learning on topics including boundaries, consent and online safety, helping students to build on their previous knowledge and enabling schools to meet their PSHE curriculum targets with ease.
Streetwise will provide a multi-faceted approach, by delivering workshops to students and training teachers, in addition to providing parent sessions to help them learn and develop themselves, as well as understand the issues that their young people are facing daily and provide essential signposting for at-home support.
During the same period, in the Jewish community, there was a rise in antisemitic incidents, following the 11-day conflict in the Middle East. CST’s latest report states that 25 per cent of incidents recorded between May 7 and June 8 occurred in educational settings such as schools and universities. Streetwise delivered hundreds of anti-discrimination and personal safety sessions for young people in Jewish schools.
Stand Up! was a first port of call, too, with Tell Mama also noting a rise in anti-Muslim hate incidents related to the rising tensions in the Middle East. Responding to more than 40 school referrals, Stand Up! has risen to the challenge, obtaining national prominence within Government and educational institutions, as an essential tool for students and school communities.
The team’s educational aim is to plant a seed, whereby the conversations start in, but also go beyond, the classroom. Beyond supporting young people to think critically, young people are encouraged to recognise their social responsibility, considering themselves, their communities as well as others.
Through our Leadership by Streetwise sports-leadership accredited course, Jewish young people aged 14-18 learn leadership skills in order to give back to the community, through engagement in Maccabi GB events.More than 30 young leaders recently took part in the Maccabi GB Community Fun Run and Interfaith Run, providing an essential volunteering component to the communal event.
Stand Up! also offers an opportunity for a total of 100 students from across ten schools to take part in the Alan Senitt Upstanders Leadership Programme. Run on behalf of The Alan Senitt Memorial Trust, the programme brings together students from different faiths and backgrounds to participate in a unique learning experience, while developing their skills to create their own social action projects.
With more relaxed government guidelines on events, the teams are looking forward to resuming both programmes in full, in the coming months.
All programme offerings to secondary schools meet relevant National Curriculum aims and fit within relationships education, history, PSHE and citizenship lessons. Documents highlighting this will be made easily accessible through the Stand Up! and Streetwise websites, enabling schools to instantly identify which parts of the National Curriculum are covered by the workshops.
The need to create safe spaces for dialogue among young people is now more evident than ever. Emphasis should be placed on the mental development of students as well as their academic achievements.
Maccabi GB’s educational team staff are able to connect with young people in a different way from their teachers, with students often sharing personal and sensitive accounts of incidents and experiences for the first time. All staff members are highly trained to building participants’ knowledge on a wide range of topics concerning young people.
In the last few weeks of the school term, the conversation on racism in football led the staff members to seek training on anti-black racism by partner organisations to ensure that they do not shy away from difficult conversations, but instead challenge them directly and empower young people to do the same.
Equally the team has recently received training on the spread of conspiracy theories, involuntary celibates (incels) and how to support young people’s mental health through accredited mental health first aid training, delivered by our partner, Jami.
The team is happy to be resuming work in schools and delivering workshops across the country, to contribute to building stronger communities.
The global pandemic has intensified young people’s vulnerabilities