On 9th March Ellie Softley of Everyone Invited visits Harrodian to talk to Senior pupils about Sexual Well Being and Rape Culture.
Everyone’s Invited’s Education programme is designed to empower school communities to promote healthy relationships, sexual well-being and to tackle rape culture. This talk to senior pupils follows the organisation’s recent visit to the Sixth Form to give a frank and hard-hitting talk (which featured a showing of the conscious- stirring film commissioned by Mayor Sadiq Khan encouraging young men who allow women to be pestered to 'have a word with themselves'). It will be given by Harrodian alumna, Ellie Softley, (below) once Harrodian's Head Mentor and now Everyones’ Invited’s Head of Education and Facilitation.
Two presentations on Sexual well-being in a digital age and Rape Culture will focus on ‘delivering the right messages to young people about healthy relationships, consent, and the intersection between sex and technology’. Ellie will examine the pervasiveness of Rape Culture in modern society and will conclude by helping students to understand the ways in which young people can begin to tackle it.
Everyone’s Invited’s visit is the latest in a progressive and productive programme of pastoral sessions for Harrodian’s Senior and Sixth Form students that have taken place over recent months. These also included a talk to Sixth Formers in February by Harrodian parent, period educator and abdominal therapist Tara Ghosh. ‘Decoding Your Cycle’ set out to remind students what happens during a menstrual cycle covering common problems and understanding and planning your personal cycle.
Sixth Former, Sophia was impressed with what she heard: ‘Tara outlined to us how women and men’s hormonal cycle are fundamentally different. Ours is a 28 day cycle, theirs a 24 hour one. We are not overly "emotional" or excessively "hormonal", we simply have a different cycle and ours stretches over weeks,’ she said, concluding: ‘As a fellow Sixth Former said to me after the talk: I finally get it now’.