At the heart of our partnerships programme is a determination to enact positive change; for the remarkable organisations we work with and in our boys. Measuring change cannot be done through statistics alone. For our Voices: Partnerships Impact Report 22/23 we used a framework of data capture based on the Most Significant Change Technique. We asked our partnership community and our boys about their experiences. These conversations were transcribed and shared without editing, capturing true voices.
Glory, a Year 12 student from Fitzharrys School in Abingdon, shares her partnership story.
I wanted to join the TEDx conference to challenge myself in terms of getting out of my comfort zone and I knew that this was a really good opportunity to do that. I have a passion for writing and public speaking. I thought that there would not be much mixing in terms of different schools, but I engaged in some quite intense debates with people that I haven’t met before which I have found really interesting, hearing the perspectives of different people. One of the biggest changes for me from the conference has been understanding many difficulties within society and that the change actually starts with you. It’s about doing things locally and then it just expands and expands until it’s on a global scale; empowering yourself to be able make changes. This is important to me because of the challenges that I face with race. Today has been really inclusive. We were talking about different problems within society and acknowledging things like privilege that everyone has in one way or another.
I’d like to encourage more discussions about current events, and focus on things that we can do to empower people no matter what age, gender, race or sexuality. People have amazing views, but it is about having these opportunities to be able to break a cycle of ignorance because how can you be called ignorant when you are not given the opportunity to learn? I feel that given the opportunity to learn together can be celebratory because you don’t fuel stereotypes and stigmas about certain things rather celebrate and educate.
