This month, Kidsbridge Tolerance Museum hosted one hundred 7th and 8th grade students from different socio-economic communities in Mercer County. With the assistance of diversity educators and college-age mentors, this workshop was designed to
- Explore bullying behavior related to gender and sexual identification, and
- Create remedial action plans to bring back to their schools.
This two-day “social capital” program provided students with character education and friendship-building activities and facilitated their joint participation in three key curriculums:
- Tolerance
- Media Literacy
- Sexuality and Gender Bias (i.e. gay bashing or “that’s so gay” vernacular)
Participants
- Qualified diversity specialists
- Students from Trenton’s Grant School and Princeton’s Witherspoon School
- TCNJ college students from PRISM, TCNJ’s only group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Expected Results of this Program
Kidsbridge anticipates that this youth forum will benefit the community in several ways:
• It will cultivate new social networks among adolescents from diverse socioeconomic communities in Mercer County, increasing “social capital” for our area.
• Teens will explore the problems that cyberbullying, media meanness and gay bashing create, the pain these problems cause and the negative effects they have on individuals and school culture.
• In small groups, teens will explore solutions and design actionable, realistic plans that they can take back to their schools.
This program is part of “Building Community Bridges with Youth and College Mentors,” generously funded by a grant from the Princeton Area Community Foundation and the Harbourton Foundation.