Video based on photos professionally taken by Petr.
Jan 242009
Mr. Mansour Rajih, Yemeni poet and former prisoner of conscience, visited the Red Cross Nordic United World College. He stayed on campus from Thursday, January 22nd, to Saturday, January 24th. On Thursday evening, Amnesty International Group organized an open presentation for the college community, where Mr. Rajih talked about his life and poetry and answered students’ questions.
Mr. Rajih also participated in Human Rights classes for the first years.
Rainbow Week (Sunday January 18th to Friday the 23rd) is one of two school-wide events that the Gender And Sexuality group organizes each year. Its aim is to promote dialogue and awareness about different sexualities and their manifestations and related issues around the world. We try to achieve this by providing information from different sources and creating and environment in which students can safely react and/or express their opinions on the topic, whatever their views are. Rather than debating and arguing with each other, though, the intention is that people ask questions of and listen to each other.
This time around we started off with a Pride-parade that went from Teachers’ Hill to the Kantina on Saturday evening. This made for a 
controversial start, but it did initiate discussions. The parade was followed up by different movies shown throughout the week, among them Milk (2009), Mannen Som Elsket Yngve (2008), Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Fire (1996). Our first sharing-and-listening session took place in the Høegh Centre on Wednesday evening. This consisted of a Forum Theatre representation and an informal chat session (attended by some 50 students) with our guest, sister Józefina from the Holy Family School of Warsaw. She stayed with us over the whole week, accompanied by another teacher and two students from that school, all fully taking part in the week’s events. Sister Józefina contributed by presenting the Catholic Church´s view and policies about homosexuality and homosexuals.
Rainbow Week ended on Friday with a World Today in which four panelists once more presented different views about sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. Perspectives from biological, health and religious angles were presented, all followed by personal story. A successful question and answer session in which many students and staff participated actively closed this event.
All in all, we felt the week was a success… With room for improvement in next year’s version, of course!
