Upstanders: How Cool.org is Teaching Students to Combat Discrimination
Young Australians are growing up in an increasingly fraught climate. Racism, division and hate-fueled incidents are on the rise, and social cohesion is under pressure. We are in urgent need of new ways to help young people identify, understand and counter discrimination in all its forms. Thankfully, Cool.org (formerly Cool Australia) has a solution.
Cool.org’s ‘Upstander Education’ series of online resources helps teenage students identify prejudice, build empathy and take inclusive and positive action. The resources offer tools that are practical and empowering, and are already available, free of charge, to Year 9 and 10 students Australia-wide. Now, thanks to an extra $50,000 of grant funding courtesy of Telematics Trust, Cool.org’s scope will grow even wider as Upstander Education is refined and made available to Year 8 students for the first time. A wider audience will mean that even more young people will learn, at a critically important stage of their development, to not only avoid discriminatory behaviour themselves, but to also actively combat it when they see it.
Creating Upstanders, Not Bystanders
To create Upstanders Education, Cool.org partnered with Courage to Care – a grassroots human rights organisation with over 30 years of experience in combating racism, bullying, and discrimination. The result has been a remarkable success, reaching 63,984 Year 9 & 10 students across the nation with engaging, curriculum-aligned digital lesson plans that include ‘Understanding the Causes and Effects of Discrimination’, ‘Understanding Stereotyping’, and ‘What is the Bystander Effect?’, amongst others.
Telematics’ funding enables Cool to develop six new, digital lessons that will help students recognise prejudice, understand their own agency, and become Upstanders in their communities. Each lesson will be built using Cool.org’s Hope and Act Framework and designed with 13-to-14-year-olds in mind to ensure psychological safety, engagement, and real world action. In-depth work will also be undertaken that includes lesson design, multimedia asset creation, and student research and outreach, in order to create resources that empower participants to take positive action – in the schoolyard, workplaces, and in their communities.
Courage, Inclusion, Hope
The new resources will be delivered to Year 8 students via Cool.org’s platform, which is already used in 92% of Australian schools. This way, traditional barriers like geography, cost, and accessibility will be no issue. Regional and remote Victorian teens, in particular, stand to benefit from having world-class human rights education at their fingertips. It’s a prospect that Naomi Nicholas, Social Impact and Fundraising Manager at Cool.org, is excited to see come to life:
“The Telematics Trust grant is making it possible for Cool.org and Courage to Care to extend our Upstanders in Action education resources, at a time when schools are seeking trusted resources to respond to growing racism and social division. These new lessons will help students recognise prejudice, build empathy, and understand their power to be Upstanders in their communities. Because the lessons are delivered through Cool.org’s national platform, they remove barriers of geography and educator confidence, helping more schools, including those in regional and underserved areas, access high-quality learning. We’re incredibly grateful to the Telematics Trust for supporting this work and helping young people lead with courage, inclusion, and hope.” Naomi Nicholas - Social Impact and Fundraising Manager, Cool.org
Teaching the Stuff that Matters
By expanding the Upstander Education series to Year 8 students, Cool.org is ensuring that even more young people grow up happy, healthy, informed, and with the empathy and empowerment to tackle oncoming global challenges.
This project is but one chapter in their story – they have been equipping Australian educators with resources that help them to teach the ‘stuff that matters’ since 2009. Check out their suite of courses, activities, presentations, videos, games and more by heading to their website.