GUELPH – For most of the last decade, Catholic high schools in Wellington County have offered SAFE Clubs for students.
SAFE stands for Sexual Acceptance for Everybody, and the clubs offer a place for 2SLGBTQIA+ students and their allies to hang out, once a week at lunch time.
Having access to a SAFE Club at school means students have somewhere they can go on a weekly basis “where they feel not only safe, but honoured in their identities,” said Abby-Rose Follon, St. James Catholic High School teacher and club lead.
The SAFE Clubs are student-led, she said, so they vary from year-to-year and school-to-school.
Sometimes, the students cultivate the club as an educational space, developing workshops or “researching a queer person in history and presenting to the rest of the group on that,” Follon told the Advertiser.
“Other years, they just want to come and hang out and be in each others’ company.”
The number of students participating is fluid too, she noted, ranging from about eight to 30 at the St. James club.
Each of the four Wellington Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) high schools has a SAFE Club, and there are similar clubs at Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) high schools.
Students in clubs at the two boards connect at times, for events such as the UGDSB-run Stardust dance, which Follon said is an “awesome way for us to get out in the community, and these kids can connect with other queer kids in the community.”
A recent initiative from students in the St. James club involved creating and printing postcards with information about the club, to make available to Grade 7 and 8 students “so that they know a space like this exists when they come in Grade 9,” Follon said.
She said this project was important to students because when they were in middle school, they didn’t realize groups like the SAFE Club existed in high schools.
Follon said club members’ desire to inform younger students about the club “really spoke to me the value in these groups.”
She said there are a few St. James staff involved with the school’s SAFE Club, and it makes an impact on the students “to come and see the adults in the building that they know support them and that they can come to at any time, not even during that lunch hour.”
Stepping up to support “equity deserving groups” such as 2SLGBTQIA+ students is something Follon feels is an important position for educators to take.
She said there are students in SAFE Clubs whose “relationships with their educators are potentially lifesaving relationships, because things aren’t very safe for them at home.”
Participation in the SAFE Clubs is anonymous, Follon said, and students don’t need to sign up – it’s “a drop in and they can come and go as they please.”
