The demand for Cultural Champions comes from the bottom and the top. Devon people are eager to hear about the county’s diversity direct from the Cultural Champions themselves. But there is also a legislative climate that is working our way.
By the age of seven, all young people will have had opportunities to:
…..interact with members of the local and global community, including people from a different cultural background from their own, both within school and through supervised visits outside school
The Devon Promise, from Changing our Futures (Learning for Sustainability in Devon) DCC 2007
By the age of fourteen all young people will have had opportunities to:
…..explore views of economic and social development and social justice with members of the local and global community from different cultural backgrounds
The Devon Promise, from Changing our Futures (Learning for Sustainability in Devon) DCC 2007
The Importance of RE
…Enables pupils to develop respect and sensitivity to others, in particular those with faiths and beliefs different from their own
…Helps to combat prejudice, racism and discrimination
Every Child Matters in RE (page 9)
The Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Agreed Syllabus 20
“in a single morning [the pupils’] previous ideas about people who seek asylum have been challenged…. Very few kids have hard and fast views that can’t be shifted if they’re faced with new facts”
Guardian 29/5/07
“The British are not a single tribe, or a single religion, and we don’t come from a single place. But we are building a home where we are all able to be who we want to be, yet still be British. That is what we do: we take, we adapt and we move forward…
Young people can help to keep Britain a place where everyone is accepted, all cultural identities are respected, and where we delight in the diversity of our nation… The future of Britain relies on people understanding each other”
Benjamin Zephaniah (in the foreword to ‘We all came here from somewhere’ Diversity identities and citizenship, published by Foreign & Commonwealth Office/QIA)