Our Streets Now: Wales 2024
Our Streets Now has been working in Wales since 2021, with the Government, schools, colleges, universities and other leading organisations.
The evidence base from the ESTYN and Senedd reports is very clear that public sexual harassment disproportionately affects young people, particularly within a school setting. Despite this, young people are not being given the tools and education they need to understand and challenge it, and are consistently feeling like they can’t talk to their teachers about it.
As part of our work in Wales, we received funding from the Welsh Government to trial interventions in a school in each of the four regions in Wales. We ran eight sessions across five schools training 75 staff and facilitating workshops for 77 pupils. We worked with all English-medium schools of varying sizes and demographics. The staff training sessions focus on understanding youth experiences of public sexual harassment (PSH), responding to disclosures, developing skills to teach about PSH, and developing a whole school approach which challenges the wider culture. The pupil workshops provide a safe space for girls and marginalised genders to explore PSH and design their own projects for change, which are then presented back to staff members. After the sessions, schools were provided with resources on tackling PSH, including ready-made lesson plans, posters, safeguarding guidance and an assembly kit.
In November 2023, our Lead in Wales, Georgia, won the UN Women UK Safe Spaces Champion award for outstanding work tackling sexual harassment in public places.
Our Findings
Our initial pilot showed three key findings across the schools in Wales:
PSH remains a prevalent issue, but is still not widely spoken about in schools
Schools are at very different stages in starting to tackle the problem, but all agreed that they need more external support
Levels of knowledge varies between staff teams
The Impact
Our training sessions and workshops had the following positive outcomes:
100% of staff had an increase in confidence in answering difficult questions about PSH, the importance of an intersectional approach and had a clear action plan to take forward in their school
93% of staff had an increased understanding of young people’s experiences of PSH and the impact it has on them
71% of staff felt more comfortable responding to disclosures of PSH
What do young people say?
“I felt really comfortable to talk about my opinions and I felt like I’ve learnt so much more than I would of if the school did it.”
“I enjoyed the freedom of opinion and how comfortable they were speaking to me and others.”
“It is a safe space to talk about subjects that can be scary to talk about.”
“Our own input and ideas, safe environment, learnt a lot more about this subject”
“I like how fun and unique it was and how we were able to voice our opinions in a judgement free way”
“I liked the openness when talking about this difficult topic”
“I learnt that I can truly make a difference and stand up for myself and other girls”
And staff…
“Facilitators were amazing - knowledgeable and warm, they delivered brilliantly.”
“Engaging delivery, quality resources and nice atmosphere created”
“I learnt that change will be cultural and must include all stakeholders”
What Next?
We are proud to say that the Welsh Government has continued our funding in Wales for another year, and we will be trialling a year-long, intensive intervention project in one of the schools we worked with in Phase One.
Get Involved
Read our full impact report
If you think that your school, staff or pupils would benefit from this programme, then have a look at our schools page https://www.ourstreetsnow.org/our-schools or send an enquiry to programmes@ourstreetsnow.org
And finally, if you’d to donate to our work to ensure we can keep reaching more young people, head here: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=GBLV4QRART7LC
