Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice groups are being launched in high school and university campuses worldwide due to the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States but also from other social issues arising.
The Margin is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice group that aims to bring awareness to our school community on a wide range of topics focusing on non-dominant communities that hold power within societies. It is committed to upholding our motto through educational campaigns, discussions, guest speakers, presentations, documentaries, and more. It also aims to sustain Overseas School of Colombo’s vision and mission to empower our community of learners toward an intercultural understanding of all groups of people, as well as strive to make an even more inclusive and equitable climate for everyone.
Currently, as the school is online, we are having meetings through zoom so the group hasn’t been able to do much yet. One of the important things that we have started to raise awareness to the OSC community is that every month we select an issue (ex- Autism awareness month) and try to provide information about it to the OSC community through the daily bulletin.
I personally found daily bulletins to be pretty ineffective as most of the HR teachers skip over them or don’t read it out. The bulletin posts have been made so that our The Margin group could spread awareness among the teenagers. So, I knew that the bulletin posts were ineffective and were not reaching the target audience.
Bulletin Posts
I decided to start an Instagram account for The Margin where I posted the same bulletin posts to better reach the target audience. I regularly edited the images to make them more pleasing and appealing to look at for the audience. For each post, I would edit the images first on photoshop then upload about 2-3 images per post with a little blurb in the descriptions which were written by me and the other Margin members.
The Margin Instagram Posts
I would say it was a successful page as it gained about 50 followers from the OSC community within a few weeks and gets about 15-20 likes per post. Going ahead, I plan on doing some reposts from other organizations just like the margin to spread information on current stuff going in the world (such as AAPI hate) and pass it onto another member of the margin to keep it going.