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SHATTER- We Can! Singapore’s Youth Year Launch

One of the events we were most excited about this year was SHATTER, our launch event for the start of our Youth Year. SHATTER was held at the beginning of June at our partner organisation, *SCAPE, and aimed to highlight gender issues as well as promote an awareness of gender violence to youths.

Youth at the event came up with different gender stereotypes they'd like to break. Warning: images in this mirror might be distorted by socially constructed notions of beauty.
The SHATTER Sculpture was the centrepiece of the whole event. A compilation of stereotypes the youth reject, written on pieces of reflective paper, the SHATTER Sculpture is a symbol of youth shattering gender stereotypes that they face in daily life. These stereotypes include those related to body image, domestic roles, women in academia, as well as masculinity and sexuality.
 

One of the events we were most excited about this year was SHATTER, our launch event for the start of our Youth Year. SHATTER was held at the beginning of June at our partner venue, *SCAPE, and aimed to promote an inclusive youth culture through the celebration of individuality and the right to be free from shame, discrimination, bullying and violence. The event focused on shattering gender stereotypes that youth face in daily life, with various activities and performances to bring this message home.

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We had 200 youth coming by our booths and watching the speeches and performances at *Scape.
 
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Throughout the day, about 200 people participated in SHATTER, taking part in our community art booths, watching local musicians use their art to speak up against violence and youth speaking out and sharing stories of their personal experiences with bullying, shaming and violence. The name of the event centred on our SHATTER sculpture, a broken ‘mirror’ that we constructed with shards that we invited people to write on. Each shard carried a stereotype that they wanted to break. Other booths involved T-shirt stencilling and body painting with empowering slogans, a photo booth which invited free gender expression and graffiti walls marked with colourful handprints! We were also enthralled by the stories and music that was shared on the day. There was a great feeling of support and a sense of community which moved us tremendously.

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We had 200 youths coming by our booths and watching the speeches and performances at *Scape.
 
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We believe hearing the perspectives of those who came forward to share the challenges they faced as young people (such as cyber bullying, body shaming and dating violence) prompted other youth in the audience to think differently about how they view themselves and others. We hope that SHATTER got you thinking about what you can do to break out of restrictions that society places on all of us, and how you can help others be free to be themselves.

Both UN Women and SlutWalk Singapore had a booth at our event! It’s always nice to have allies.
Learn more about UN Women here: http://unwomen-nc.org.sg/
and SlutWalk here: http://slutwalksg.com/about/

Want to check out more photos from the event? Click here to go through our Photo Gallery!