Diversity Week

For the past two years Darwin house have hosted a Diversity Week dedicated to exploring different topics such as cultural diversity and discrimination. We have done this through hosting activities such as henna painting, food tasting and inviting guest speakers in such as Henry Schachter and Dion Bunting. The purpose of Diversity week is to encourage students to embrace diversity and to question the discrimination they may experience or see.

Monday and Tuesday the school was segregated during break & lunchtime. Monday saw the boys being given preferences throughout the school day ahead of the girls, and vice versa on Tuesday. A physical barrier was in place to graphically represent this segregation. The idea behind this ‘experiment’ was to show students how it felt to be segregated based on gender. 

Generally, the girls were very calm and responded calmly to the change in routine. They appeared to embrace the whole project, whilst the boys took a while to adjust to the impact and were angry about the segregation, protesting and shouting. On Wednesday Year 9 were given the rare opportunity to listen to the personal testimony of a Holocaust survivor, Mr Henry Schachter. A deeply moving presentation providing students an insight into life under such unimaginable conditions.

Thursday was an inter-house competition based around the best display board. Each team were given a topic around segregation such as racism, pay inequality between men and women, stereotypes and the famous ‘blue eye, brown eye experiment’ conducted by Jane Elliot in 1968. Friday was about ActionAid, a leading international charity working in 45 countries. They work with the poorest women and children in the world, changing their lives for good. Through ActionAid, Westfield Academy are sponsoring Sifa Balagire.

We have sponsored Sifa for the last two years and have received letters and pictures. Sifa is a little girl from The Democratic Republic of Congo and lives in a place called Idjwi Sud. She was born in 2007 and is one of a family of 14! 8D1 and Miss Hide hosted a bake sale throughout break and lunch which raised a brilliant £180 for ActionAid and Sifa. Our money helps to support Sifa access her education. A very delicious end to a fantastic diversity week! Thank you Miss Martin for once again organising this event.

Released On 23rd Jun 2016