Guest post: Blast-off for #PositionofStrength Next Gen

We are @projectrockit, Australia’s youth driven movement against bullying, hate, and prejudice. We work in Australian schools everyday, sending a team of young, charismatic presenters to run interactive and high-energy workshops with students to come up with real and credible strategies that they’d actually use when it comes to bullying on and offline.

@Projectrockit was recently named an inaugural member of the Twitter Trust & Safety Council, so we are super excited to further work with @TwitterAU to create a safe space online for young people, starting with the incredible #PositionOfStrength: Next Gen event.

Yesterday, 24 students who self-identify as girls came together from six diverse schools across Sydney to celebrate their uniqueness, learn how to use Twitter safely, and be trained in how to project their voice online. @TwitterAU and @projectrockit ran sessions with the group of girls exploring grand ideas, passions, personal values, their #PositionOfStrength and how Twitter can help create a movement.

Through a series of activities, Lucy Thomas (@lucylockit), co-founder of @projectrockit, and I worked with the girls to choose and voice themselves just how they want to be remembered by their peers.

As girls, as young people, we can often be given a social label that we don’t identify with, that quite simple isn’t who we truly are. I’m talking judgments and negative, harmful ones. At Next Gen, the girls were inspired to personally decide the social labels they want to wear! Yes, there are risks in standing up for what we truly believe in, yes there are sometimes risks in staying real, being who we truly are, but we decided it is totally worth it.

(Photography supplied by @silje_ac)

The girls discussed that leadership is so much more than a ‘one-size-fits-all-T-shirt’, it looks totally different on everyone because we are passionate about different things, we hold different values and beliefs, and we’re all wonderfully unique, which should be celebrated!

Our good mate from Twitter, @Tweetinjules, whom we fondly call “Jig”, presented the “how-to” of Twitter. Jig equipped the girls with skills and strategies to stay safe on the platform whilst empowering the girls to control their experiences. We were thrilled that she brought a little extra star power to the proceedings today with engaging online and on-air conversationalist @Ash_London about how she uses Twitter as her positive megaphone.

@tweetinjules ended her presentation on a high note with some beautiful and inspiring pre-recorded sentiments from Aussie megastar @JessicaMauboy about being strong, solid, and most importantly, yourself, on Twitter.

To end the workshop, the super-vivacious Rosie Thomas (@Rosiethomas1), co-founder of PROJECT ROCKIT, took the group through a whirlwind session, providing insight and personal experience in how projecting your passion and voice online can be a great asset in creating a movement. She discussed movements of her own organisation, that started as a small idea that then became widespread campaigns such as PROJECT ROCKIT’s #stopwatching campaign.

@projectrockit could not be more pumped to have been in Sydney, running the very first #PositionofStrength Next Gen workshop. These girls have proved today that the next generation of leaders are a bunch of fierce individuals and are ready to create the change they want to see in the world. Absolute legends!