Past, Current & Upcoming Projects
Women's Week 2020
This year, for two members are leading activities for Women's Week throughout the different grade levels. One activity is the building of boards discussing inequalities in different areas of life. Another activities that are Brough back from the previous Women's Week was presentations, but this year it is for two weeks every day at lunch. Finally, there will be a panel with the discussion topic being 'only woman at the table'.
Feminism Workshops for Primary
This project is similar to out workshops for secondary school, however it will be teaching an intro to Feminism, for grade 3 to grade 5 students. When we did the consent workshops for secondary, it worked well but for a lot of people they had very limited background knowledge about the topics so we thought if we started talking about these concepts with younger children, then we will not have as hard of time further on in there educational future.
Creating Connections 2020
More details coming soon...
See a project you want to be a part of? Have a project we might be interested in?
Past Projects
CSE and Prevention of Sexual Violence Workshop
On November 27th we went to Kita-Kyushu University to present on sexual harassment in college and what consent is. This was our first long-distance conference and it was quite exciting to present. It is never too late to learn about consent and we hope that through this workshop the students and professors in attendance can learn more about these topics and how to talk about them. We feel that each and every workshop gives us more to reflect on and more to be proud of. The audience seemed really engaged and we felt that they learned a lot from this workshop and this was our main goal.
The Joys and Challenges of Difference in Japan
We went to Kyoto Sangyo University and presented on the joys and challenges of difference in Japan. Having such a diverse group of members lets us understand different cultures and identities in new and more exciting ways. Our goal during this conference was to better understand the difference in cultures and other parts of our identity better. This helps in developing our understanding of different mindsets and helping each other develop in new ways. In this conference, we talked about the joys and challenges of being different in Japan. We talked about differences in race, gender, education, cultural background, and many other things. We talked about these differences in our life play such a huge role in our identity and how they are incorporated into our lives.
Creating Connections Conference (2019)
In the 2019 Creating Connections Conference, we discussed the trials and successes in our journey will establishing a sexuality education program at our school. We outlined how we were able to propose the idea to the school board, and the result of a series of consent workshops that we did from grades 6 - 12. From grade to grade, we discussed what went well and what did not and the differences of working with a 6th grader versus a 12th grader. This conference was less of a workshop and more of a presentation about an achievement that we want to use to inspire others to create their own inclusive sexuality educations for the community as whole. The connection to sexuality education and our own club is the fact that proper sexuality education will include concepts of consent which are key in our own discussions about sexual harassment and assault. If the concept of consent is grounded earlier in life, the harassment rate ideally.
Caster Semenya is a South African runner who has a higher amount of testosterone in her body since she was born. This technically gives her a genetic advantage which is what caused an uproar from other competitors and the IAAF about her participation in the sport. They want to bar her from competing because of this. However, we believe that this is an incorrect reason to not allow her to do what she loves. A runner who has a higher amount of testosterone doesn't just become a better runner. It takes dedication and practice to become as good as she is. Also, the IAAF barring her from competing for displays the double standards in sports. Micheal Phelps has lower lactic acid build-up which gives him a genetic advantage, but he is just lucky. Semenya's genes, on the other hand, are just unfair. We made posters protesting against their decision as shown on the left to show our support. During our discussions regarding the topic, we talked more about how binary sports are and how there is a favor toward able-bodied sports, especially in our own high school. These are all important points that are worth further discussion.
Women's Week (2019)
March 8th, 2019
Although 2019's Women's Week was mainly run by school staff, we were very proud to see everyone sharing their ideas and being more active in the discussions started this week. Some activities that went on were lunchtime presentations from different women in the school sharing an idea or viewpoint (i.e. women in science). There were also posters made by students to acknowledge the achievements of the unrecognized women of the past. The displays were great to see, and we hope to keep this weekly tradition going.#StopTransBill
January 25th, 2019
The #StopTransBill, was a protest in India against a bill that was going to be passed that severely oppressed the rights of transgender people in India. Some parts of the bill were:
- Transgender people will not be legally recognized unless they have had gender reconstruction surgery. This surgery can be costly for many, so some transgender people can't go through it. Others don't want to have the surgery because the surgery can be dangerous, or they just don't want to have it.
- The criminalization of begging. This affects transgender people specifically because in India, it can be very difficult for transgender people to be hired whether or not they are highly qualified for the job. This leads to many transgender people in India relying on begging in order to survive.
That is why we decided to raise money to support their fight. We did a bake sale, and we ended up raising 36,120 yen.
Osaka School Conference
November 30th, 2018.
This conference had two purposes. One, to try to spread the word about Nagoya Action Heroes to other schools in Japan and perhaps make another group of action heroes. Two, to represent our school about sustainability in service clubs. We gave a presentation about all we have done at Osaka International School.
Transgender Book Fundraiser
September 26th, 2018
Transgender comic book artist, Sophie Labelle had a Kickstarter to fund the printing of inclusive children's book that have characters who identify as transgender. She needed a Kickstarter because she does not charge anyone for sending the books to them, but she still needs money to print. We decided to raise money in our school in order to give people the opportunity to make other schools and places more inclusive by supporting the printing of the books. We raised a lot of money to support her.
Nagoya University Conference
October 3rd, 2018
The Nagoya University Workshop was our first workshop for other people, and we did it with university students. We talked about many things: the stages of consent, how to be an ally, and breaking down what consent is. We also touched a bit on Chikan (sexual assaulters in trains) and the culture of sexual harassment in Japan. We hope to go back and complete another seminar at this university, so we can build on the basis of consent and sexual harassment that we have begun to explain to them. This workshop is also what influenced some of our consent lesson plans for grade 6-12 students which we will be shared on this website soon.
TELL Suicide Prevention Walk
September 14th 2018
TELL is a suicide prevention organization that has 24/7 lifeline for people to contact and has helped many people around the world with different issues. Mainly TELL is a suicide prevention hotline but they also have Psychology for all ages and We marched in the streets to protest suicide and to spread awareness about the growing suicide rate around the world. We handed out flyers and talked to people in our community about these issues and how they could help.
Osaka-Kyoto Conference
April 22nd, 2018
This was one of our first conferences that we had been invited to. It contained two talks about the culture of sexual harassment in Japan, and women in the workforce. We were able to interact with the speakers, and ask questions to gain more knowledge about the topic. This was also another great place to network with people that have a lot of knowledge in the subjects that we want to investigate to a greater extent.
Sexuality Education Program
June 7th, 2018
This proposal was focused on affecting our school community. We realized that our school did not have a sexuality education program of any form, much less on that is inclusive and acknowledges the different situations for people with a variety of identities. We created a proposal in an attempt to convince our school to create an inclusive sexuality education program. This proposal contained data from students about what they would want to learn. This data was collected through a grade 6-12 survey. The proposal also contained programs around the world that we believed were good models, reasoning for the creation of this program, and what is the difference between sex ed and sexuality education.
Creating Connections Conference (2018)
April 7th, 2018
Creating Connections Conference is a conference that takes place every year at Nagoya International School. Although it may be run at Nagoya International School, the organizers of the conference are not affiliated with the school itself. Our workshop for this conference was about how to be an ally. We did a multitude of activities with the participants as shown below.
We started of the presentation introducing Nagoya Action Heroes, and talking more about what exactly we had done so far.
We split into two groups to start a discussion based off of scenarios. Each scenario was also connected with a questions to start the conversation. We tracked the group's thinking through post it notes attached to a poster created by us.
Conversations went in very interesting directions. There were connections made as to how teachers can work to be better allies, and how ally ship may mean different things in various cultures.
Women's Week (2018)
March 8th, 2018
Women's Week was our first major event as a club. We did a lot to celebrate and acknowledge women and their struggles all around the world. First off, we had two different hashtags inspired by our associated group, Blank Noise: #INeverAskForIt and #IWillGoOut. #INeverAskForIt is meant to call out the victim blaming culture in society today. #IWillGoOut is meant to empower women to reclaim public areas where they may feel uncomfortable [i.e. walking outside at night]. We created these stories we recieved in response to these hashtags and made posters we put all around the school. We also did a 45 minute lesson of consent for the middle schoolers at our school (grades 6-8).