 | |
| Founded | 2010 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Claudia White |
| Type | EducationalCharity |
| Focus | Education,LGBTQ,respect,bullying andhomophobia |
| Location |
|
Area served | Global with focus on theUS andUK |
| Method | Popular education and social media awareness campaigns |
| Website | www |
GRIN Campaign,GlobalRespectin Education, is a transatlantic non-profit organisation andadvocacy group which campaigns primarily forlesbian,gay,bisexual,transgender, andqueer/questioning (LGBTQ) people's social and political equality in education.[1][2][3] It seeks to enddiscrimination,harassment, andbullying based onsexual orientation,gender identity andgender expression in all educational institutes with an underlying message that "being different was 'cool'".[4] It is one of the first campaigns of its kind to originate outside the United States, be run by students and intentionally international.[5][6][7]
The campaign supports both direct action and aviral photographic protest, known as “RESPECT” to help "make respecting people in school a cool idea" and ignorance to be “uncool”.[1][6] The photographs show people in front of a white backdrop wearing block rainbow colors with “RESPECT” painted on their face in the colors of thepride flag.[8] The campaign was created on October 29, 2010, byBedales School student Claudia White.[1] The RESPECT photographs are featured on the campaign's website, as well asFacebook andFlickr. The campaign also had over 1000 followers onTwitter within a week of its website going live.[9][unreliable source?]
GRIN Campaign was initiated in response to a rash of widely publicizedbullying-related suicides of juvenile, particularly, LGBTQ youth, including that ofTyler Clementi.[2][10] It was established as a UK and US alternative to other, older LGBT civil rights advocacy organizations, which did not place as much emphasis on education, and focused only on the United States.[6] The campaign hopes to build awareness in the same spirit as theDay of Silence,It Gets Better Project,No on 8 campaigns and efforts to repealDon't Ask Don't Tell.[11]
The campaign coordinated withSpirit Day (October 20) when people are encouraged to wear purple symbolic of spirit from therainbow flag.[2]
In 2011 the campaign worked to add "amendments to theUK’s Educational White Paper, started developing anti-bullying and LGBT rights lesson plans, and wrote letters to corporations in the UK that they believed were being homophobic or transphobic."[6] In the summer of 2012 the campaign received a grant to travel toSan Francisco in the United States to teach their lesson plans about discrimination based bullying and utilize the RESPECT photographic campaign.[6]
In 2013 the campaign started a petition to add the word 'transphobia' to theOxford English Dictionary and the dictionary lexicon ofMicrosoft Office. The petition was hosted on the websiteChange.org and gained nearly 10,000 signatures. By June, both Microsoft and the Oxford English Dictionary had added the word 'transphobia' to their dictionary lexicons.[12][13][14]
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