We are delighted to share a blog written by Gabrielle Stella Wong & Katrina Poon, a student at Chinese International School, China who are part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project ‘Rainbow Happiness Challenge’ is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
We would recommend people our age to get involved in similar projects, as it is an amazing opportunity to identify social issues and direct our passions towards it.
Our experience so far has been challenging, exhilarating and extremely educational.
Project Summary
Rainbow Challenge is a project aimed at supporting the LGBTQ+ community in our local community in Hong Kong and Hangzhou, China. We believe that there is an ever-growing need for acceptance, understanding and empathy towards members of the LGBTQ+ community. We strive to spread awareness on issues such as homophobia, build understanding and connection between allies and LGBTQ+ individuals, and promote LGBTQ+ self-expression.
So far, we have launched a social media account and a website to promote our cause. We post challenges that challenge users to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community through means of self-expression. In both our social media and website viewers can see the submissions we’ve gotten from our latest challenge, the sign challenge. This challenge was launched about a month ago and required users to submit a photo of themselves holding a sign with an LGBTQ+ friendly quote. We believe that this challenge is effective because it isn’t overly difficult and is simple. Currently, we have 20+ submissions from friends, classmates and even strangers we met on our social media platforms.
Our Journey
As a team, we have learnt to cooperate and split tasks under time pressure, as well as persevering when things don’t go our way. We’ve continued to develop our skills of teamwork, collaboration, perseverance, and self-motivation. All these skills are so useful, and the GSL Global Goals Competition has really helped us pursue our passions of actively participating and changing a global social issue in the world.
Our biggest challenge is enlarging our audience to raise awareness for our project. As of right now, we have had submissions from friends, classmates and strangers that we met on our social media platforms, but we want to have as many people as possible doing this simple challenge to show their support. We want it to go as viral as possible and through social media, we hope to reach out to people who need to see this support when going through hard times. We hope to overcome these issues by first getting as many people as possible in our school community to do it, then reaching out to people and getting them to reach more and more people.
The Next Chapter
We would recommend people our age to get involved in similar projects, as it is an amazing opportunity to identify social issues and direct our passions towards it. Whether it is an equality issue, a health issue or an education issue, as long as you have the passion for it, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to strive to change these issues in the world, and with your classmates and friends. It’s a time for people to stand up for others, to help and accept anyone – of any gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity – and that’s what we aim to do.
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The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
