Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Champions is a highly commended, student-led initiative at Borden Grammar School that fosters “healthy masculinity” and combats violence against women and girls. Developed by students at a predominantly male school in Kent, the initiative has shifted the school’s entire safeguarding culture and was “Highly Commended” at the National Crimebeat Awards 2026.
The project was born out of a need to address a shifting cultural landscape. Against a national backdrop of harmful online figures influencing young men, a listening exercise with the female students in their mixed Sixth Form raised an urgent need to highlight misogyny, harassment, and personal safety in a space dominated by male peers.
With domestic abuse featuring in 5% of the school’s historical safeguarding cases, the community recognised a dual crisis: boys in these homes were growing up as secondary victims, and all young people lacked the tools to identify toxic traits within their own emerging relationships.
Innovation and Activities
The school chose to tackle the problem by empowering a team of young people across multiple year groups to act as leaders. Recognising that top-down adult lectures can often cause young men to become defensive, the student-led VAWG Champions took full control of the messaging.
The Champions met regularly with local police officers to co-design school assemblies that focused deliberately on “the impact on boys as well as the impact of boys.” By shaping the material to be supportive rather than accusatory, they ensured their peers felt included in the solution rather than targeted as the problem.
The Champions didn’t limit their work to school walls. They launched a multi-tiered campaign to weave safeguarding straight into the local community, including:
- Walking the local High Street alongside police officers, engaging face-to-face with local businesses. Their efforts successfully brought 9 new shops on board as designated safe spaces for young people in crisis.
- Turning the school’s digital network into an educational tool, pushing White Ribbon safety bulletins onto every computer desktop and setting up rolling screens with QR codes at parents’ evenings to instantly connect families with local support charities.
- Older Year 13 students partnered with younger Year 8 pupils to deliver assemblies, providing a continuous line of visible, positive role models within the student body.
Impact and Evaluation
A whole-school student voice survey confirmed that the VAWG Champions have fundamentally reshaped the student environment, with incidents of sexual harassment or violence dropped from 9% down to just 2%. A graduating Year 13 student stated that being a VAWG Champion was the single proudest achievement of his entire school career.
The VAWG Champions are now focused on long-term sustainability and succession planning. To ensure the momentum continues after the senior students graduate, the older Champions have successfully recruited a passionate new wave of younger students to take over.
Looking outward, the team is currently working alongside the police on an expansion plan to visit other schools across Kent. By sharing their blueprint, they hope to help other educational institutions weave these vital conversations about respect, safety, and healthy relationships into the fabric of their own cultures.
