SASOD announces sensitisation series for educators

Joel Simpson and Dr Preity R Kumar

– ‘Ordinary Landscape of Violence’ launched

The Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) will conduct a training and sensitisation series with lecturers and teachers from the University of Guyana and the Cyril Potter College of Education. This is expected to begin before the end of this year, according to Managing Director of SASOD Joel Simpson.

“We are starting first with a research project, but one of the activities we are wanting to do within the research project is sensitising teachers and educators, especially those at the faculty of education at UG and at CPCE,” Simpson said. “We plan to roll out a series of training on anti-gender violence, [and] restorative justice. The education stakeholders have the capacity to address these issues. The Minister of Education had reached out sometime back and spoken about sensitisation of the school counsellors. We haven’t been able to bring that into fruition yet but it signals there is a willingness or at least an awareness that there is a problem. We appreciate that this is a multi-stakeholder effort. While we project that there is something to start at the systemic level, we don’t have that access and we don’t have that control. A proposal from the research will be put to the ministry and to see if that will be accepted.”