60 sentinels from all the high schools in the municipality who are part of the training programme for mediators for Equality took part this Friday in a meeting held at the Lagar Don Elías, in Las Lagunas. An activity that completes the training that around 80 sentinels have received since last November and of which the coordinator of Iguala, the company in charge of carrying it out, Paloma Tosar, assured that ‘it is always very successful’ and applauded the fact that "there are mediators in each centre, who are responsible for monitoring situations of violence, who receive complaints, denunciations or doubts from students who are having a bad time, this always works well" and she pointed out that “there are students who are having a bad time and who find it difficult to talk about it with their family or teachers, and being able to talk about it with an equal, such as a classmate, always works very well”. 

 

This programme is promoted by the Family and Equal Opportunities Department of the Mijas Town Council in collaboration with the Mijas high schools Villa de Mijas, Sierra de Mijas, Las Lagunas, La Cala, Torre Almenara and Ana Carmona ‘Veleta’ and their respective Equality coordinators. During this meeting, the students were visited by the mayoress of the municipality, Ana Mata (PP), who is also in charge of this department, who valued the commitment of the students to be part of this programme. "It is interesting for the students to have these tools to be able to develop as individuals and to be able to detect and help when there is any problem within the school environment, but they are also learning skills that will help them in the future", said the mayoress, who pointed out that thanks to this programme the sentinels help other classmates "who may be suffering from bullying or being victims of violence with their partners". 

 

During this meeting, which coincided with the International Day against LGTBI-phobia, three different group dynamics were developed, each lasting 15 minutes and consisting of representatives from the six educational centres, as well as carrying out a performance and writing on continuous paper how they felt during this day. "The objectives are to get to know each other, to review the programme, to study in depth the issue of bullying, gender violence and LGTBI-phobia, and to draw up a manifesto against this and in favour of freedom", said Tosar.  

 

The experience of the sentinels

During this day, they had the opportunity to share their experience as sentinels. "I really enjoyed it, I made several posters and helped some children who had problems", said Lucas Fernández, a student in the 3rd year of ESO at IES Las Lagunas, who recommends other students from his school to take part in this programme "because you learn a lot, it helps you to understand what people are like and to help them with whatever they need’. On his reasons for becoming a mediator, Fernández said that ‘I had heard that there were people who had signed up, I had never tried it so I wanted to give it a try".

For her part, Zoe Kristiansen, also a 3rd year ESO student at IES La Cala, said that "the programme is very good, we have done many things with a lot of people from our school, such as posters, presenting ourselves in the centre and solving problems". In her case, it was her tutor who proposed her to take part in this initiative: "I agreed and, once I got involved, I liked it". The student gives us some of the keys, or rather, social skills that an Equality sentinel should have: "Be friendly, sociable and get along well with people".

 

Regarding the event, Fernández said he was surprised that "I didn't know that there were so many people who had signed up for this activity, which I think is quite interesting". Kristiansen expressed herself similarly, stating that "I didn't think there would be so many people involved in this, which may seem silly, but in the end you realise that a lot of people are interested in it". 

Thanks to coexistence days, the support network is also growing, turning it into a municipal network in which students, teachers and the town council all participate. 

 

Training

During the months in which the initiative has been developed, work has been carried out in three different blocks. The first part was dedicated to training, given by teachers specialised in gender studies and with experience in the prevention of gender-based violence; a second phase of action with the creation of a support network and the organisation of key events in the different centres; and a final block aimed at monitoring to assess the actions carried out during the academic year.

The main objective of this initiative is to provide training in equality, gender-based violence and diversity of gender identity and sexual orientation, with the aim of training them as Equality Sentinels so that they can detect and prevent situations of abuse or aggression both in the school and outside it.

This is why education plays a key role in training young people as transmitters of equality values, who are able to identify and intervene in obvious cases of violence, while creating a support network between students and teachers to eradicate any situation of abuse.

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