Wear it Purple Day - last Friday in August.

Wear It Purple is a youth led campaign, started in Australia in 2010 in reaction to a number of prominent suicides by young LGBTIQA+ people.  

The day is about showing rainbow young people, and everybody around them, that they have the right to be proud of who they are.

Celebrating Wear it Purple Day in school communities sends a powerful message of inclusion. 

Whether your school community is ready to celebrate Wear It Purple officially or unofficially, there is a huge range of activities that principals, teachers, parents and students can do to show their support to rainbow youth.  

Whatever stage of inclusion your school is at, there is something you can do to show your support to rainbow young people.  And most of these are FREE.  

• History of Wear It Purple

• Register an event and get free stuff!!

• Kit yourself out in official Wear It Purple merchandise

• How to talk about sexual and gender diversity in primary schools.

It can feel a bit daunting to ask your school community to take further steps towards inclusion.  So we have made it easier by writing a letter to principals, teachers and parents explaining the importance of schools celebrating the day with suggestions about the variety of ways in which schools can participate.  And of course the letter has info about how schools can get all the awesome FREE merchandise.  

Ideas for using the letter:

• You can email it to your school's principal and your child's teachers. Or print it, and take it in person.

• Why not email it to your friends in the school community, so they can do the same? The more people that email or talk to the school about Wear It Purple, the more likely they are to recognize its importance and celebrate it.

• How about making it a post on your Facebook page, and sending it to the school's parents' Facebook group, inviting them to bring it up with the school?

• And what about posting it in other social media where parents and teachers will see it?

• And for teachers - you can send it to other teachers via email or social media so that they can use it in their schools. And how about sending it to your union and other professional groups so they can publicize it?

Schools, workplaces and community groups can register a Wear it Purple Day event and receive bucket loads of FREE merchandise, including stickers, posters and wristbands.  This is a great way to get the message out to the whole school, with the added weight of official backing.  If your school is not quite ready for this, you can still influence the school community by registering an event at a supportive nearby cafe, or even getting a group of parents or students together to hold an event in a nearby park.   

Go Purple on social media

You can spread the word about WIPD by putting a new frame around Facebook profile pictures, changing Facebook banner photos, and putting a new banner on websites. 

• Schools can do this on their official websites and Facebook pages,

• parent groups can do this for the school parent page,

• and/or individual parents can do it for their own Facebook profile pics.

Staff, parents and students can show their support for LGBTQI youth by buying awesome merchandise from the Wear it Purple online store, including wristbands, drink bottles, T-shirts and hoodies.  

Wear It Purple has posters, stickers and postcards that can be downloaded from their website, and printed at home, work or school. 

Putting these posters up all over school would be pretty awesome.  Or if the school is not ready for that yet, putting them up in local businesses will still get them seen by the school community.  Local libraries, cafes and shops are often happy to show support, and families can put them up in their home front windows.  

Resources for primary schools often focus on three main themes to teach sexual and gender diversity: 1) prevention of bias-based bullying and name-calling, 2) embracing family diversity, 3) understanding gender stereotypes and gender diversity, and 4) responding to concerns.

The media furore around the Safe Schools program has meant that Australian resources that were once freely available online, are now not.  This is particularly true of resources relating to teaching sexual and gender diversity in primary schools.  But there are still some relevant Australian materials around, and of course there are some amazing US resources, in particular, GLSEN and Welcoming Schools which both have lesson plans, videos, and information for parents and educators.

1) Prevention of bias-based bullying.

• Rights, Responsibilities and Respectful Relationships suggests this Welcoming Schools tip sheet with a range of statements for children to use in the face of verbal gender-based violence.

• And Bully Stoppers (Dep of Ed, VIC) has some great advice about responding to homophobic behaviours.

2) Embracing family diversity.

• Poster: The Rainbow Families Victoria poster 'Who's In Your Family' is a great way to start conversations with children around family diversity, including: single parents, same-sex couples, step-families, extended families and foster families.

• Books: There are also lots of books about family diversity to support these conversations. Hares & Hyenas, a queer bookstore in Melbourne, has put together two lists of books, one of books appropriate for primary to secondary aged kids, and the other for 12-15 year olds.

• Movie and lesson plans: The Gayby Baby School Action Toolkit is also a great way to discuss family diversity in primary schools. The Gayby Baby movie can be watched on itunes, and there is a free primary resource that they recommend for years 5 and 6, and a free secondary resource, that you can download from their website.

3) Gender Stereotypes and gender diversity.

• The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships learning materials cover gender and identity in Topic 7 and contain 3-4 activity ideas for each age level.

• Welcoming Schools, a program of the Human Rights Campaign in the US, suggests the following Lesson Plans to Help Students Understand Gender and to Support Transgender and Non-Binary Children.

• For books and resources on embracing and supporting trans and gender diverse young people, The Rainbow Owl has suggestions for children and young people, for parents and families, and for educators and schools.

4) Responding to concerns.

•  This tip sheet from Welcoming Schools entitled Responding to Some Concerns About Being LGBTQ Inclusive, includes suggestions on how to frame the discussion of the importance of inclusion in schools, that will be relevant to conversations with students, parents, teachers and school leadership.