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| Report on the Youth Mental Health Expo, Dunedin 2002 | ||
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Sue and Erin at the YMH Expo It is hard to say who received the most education, even though it was PFLAG South who set out (bravely!) to educate the public, especially year 10 pupils, at the recent Mental Health Expo. The venture was promoted and funded by Public Health South, as an attempt to promote resilience and help seeking behaviour amongst fourth formers in the Dunedin district. There were between 40 and 50 stalls, which included counselling agencies, church groups, and others which catered for the needs of At Risk Youth, also Polynesian and Maori cultural activities, Venturer Scouts, Sport, Mountaineering, Family planning, Sexual Health, and PFLAG South! This was a new venture for the organisers as well as for our group, and we proceeded with some caution, knowing that our participation could be uncertain. Our stall while aimed at reassuring gay youth and offering information, would also need to be acceptable enough so that the community, would not find us too much of a threat! PFLAG has been going in Dunedin for almost three years and we are still working to make ourselves known and accepted in a community where silence usually prevails about homosexuality. It was a challenging task, but I think we got bolder as we went along! We offered our two leaflets, one about PFLAG describing what we offer, also a leaflet for parents, a booklet BE YOURSELF for gay youth, and also cards with our contact numbers. For counsellors we provided lists of our resources, on the website and also in leaflet form. Part of the brief for the stall was to provide an “ interactive and experiential activities ” It took a while to sort out what that might mean! Another challenge was knowing that from as young as primary school here, it is the ultimate insult to call someone “gay”, and therefore our stall would be regarded as very unsafe by the young people. We needed to find an activity that was fairly unthreatening, so we came up a photo quiz about famous gay people, and offered the chance to win free movie passes. One of our members prepared the display, and the entry forms. Each form had a question such as “Name a gay member of NZ parliament,( or sports star, or novelist, etc)” which was to be filled in, from the photo display, then cut off and put in the barrel to be drawn later. The other portion of the form, contained PFLAG contact numbers, and on the back, “Someone in my class is gay, what can I do?”, a list of eight ways to support gay friends. The other thing we did, (this was the bold bit!) was that two of us mothers had tee shirts printed with photos of our children, which proclaimed “PROUD MUM OF FIVE (FOUR) Which one is gay?” We figured that would be both interactive AND experiential! In large letters above the stall we had a poster “PARENTS WHO SAY IT’S OK IF YOU’RE GAY” We hoped that it was large enough to reassure the frightened ones who would not be seen near us. In the last week before the Expo there were a few hiccups. A parent (a concerned one) wanted a list of participating stalls from Public Health South. Then some of the schools became worried about the content of the Expo. We were in good company as it happened, with Sexual Health, Family Planning... and the Buddhists! How did it turn out? Here are some impressions, in no particular order, noticed by the four of us who manned the stall during the day. We caused a stir with our tee shirts, and many young people wanted to talk about the photos of our children, usually guessing quite wrongly who was gay! Their guesses were based on some strange reasoning, such as what jobs they did, or even that the one in profile instead of looking straight at the camera, was gay, or the one who was clowning had to be the gay one! Many counsellors came and took our material, which was good. Comments included: “Gandalf gay?! Oh GROSS!” and “ They should just change themselves then, and NOT be gay”! We found the co-ed schools to be far more accepting than the single sex schools. The experience of insolence (and probably fear) from two of the boys’ schools and one of the girls schools, was educational for us. Four schools did not participate so instead of 1600 young people there were probably around 1200. 133 entered in our competition, 45 were boys, 88 were from girls. What did we learn? The ignorance about homosexuality is deep and widespread. We noticed that quite a number of people returned to the stall later and looked around quietly and took what they wanted. We think it might work well, to provide, say, some lift up flaps each with a commonly asked question, with the answer underneath, and to set it up so that people could browse and find answers, at their own pace and without necessarily, any interaction. The tee shirts did serve their purpose, and yet I also wondered whether at this stage in the evolution of gay awareness in Dunedin, some people might have preferred talking to someone who looked a bit more “normal”. A small beginning, but we hope that we were able to help at least some. Hope we can try again sometime. Thanks to everyone who helped, and encouraged, We needed that. Sue Thompson PFLAG South (April 2002)
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