INTERNATIONAL PRONOUNS DAY

Cheetah’s for Change decided that in honor of the upcoming International Pronouns Day, we would undergo a project with the aim to educate people in the community about the importance of pronouns. There are many misconceptions about pronouns, that we’ve seen people experience firsthand. So with the goal of education in mind, we started brainstorming ideas on how to change the way of thinking and create a more accepting community.

First, we had to figure out what we were going to do. We ended up whittling it down to two ideas: A pronoun tag booth and an informational video to show to the school. The booth happened first, taking place on International Pronouns Day itself. At lunchtime, some members of the group set up the booth in the entrance to the school with blank name tags and pens. Anyone who wanted pronoun tags were able to make their own and wear them. We wanted to not only make people’s pronouns clear, but also normalize the discourse of pronouns, to make it a safer topic to freely discuss.

Once the booth was done, we focused our efforts on the video. We had to keep it short and sweet, while also including all the necessary information. However, we knew that a video that did nothing but lecture wouldn't reach some people, even with the short runtime, which meant we had to get creative. So we recruited some people, and decided to make use of the pronoun tags to create a visual statement on the effects of mislabelling and bullying. These culminated into the final video, to be shown in front of the whole school.

We were all extremely happy with how the video went, and were excited to have the opportunity to educate many people at one time about a topic that has been subject to much confusion in recent years. While we unfortunately weren’t able to discuss everything we wanted to, we were still able to discuss a lot, and it was an opportunity that we were all proud to participate in.