What the hell is an Active Collective? And does it bite?

Hell yeah it does...

I realise in there's been some confusion over what the Active Collective's role is in our school. Is it a money-raising organisation? Does it exist just to organise the Oxjam?

Well, here's the (sort of) dictionary definition:

Active: disposed to take action or effectuate change
Collective: group of people who share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest

Um, that's less clear than I intended. Basically, we're a group of people (in this case we're mostly students who attend or have attended Wellington East Girls' College) who are united by our common interest of raising awareness of current issues affecting Aoteroa and the world, and who want to take action to address these issues.

Here's our mission statement:

'The Active Collective', is about banding together to discuss issues of critical importance in today's society, and working out ways to raise awareness. We are currently based at Wellington East Girls College.

Some of the issues we would like to tackle include racism, women's rights (including the sexualisation of women and children in pop culture), homophobia, war, poverty, the environment and animal rights, youth rights, civil rights and capitalism. At the meetings we plan to discuss the issues themselves and ways to act on them, such as organizing petitions and rallies, writing letters to people of influence to get our views heard.

The Story of the Active Collective:

Once upon a time, the Active Collective was started up (in Term 3 2007) by seventh-formers Anne and Annie, who were inspired by senior speech competition and the realisation that East girls did actually care about what's happening in the world! (Unfortunately the girl with the most inspiring speech failed to show.) The initial meeting was a success, with many girls turning up and a fierce debate arising over whether the Burger King bouncy-horse girl ads were sexist.

Then someone suggested holding an Oxjam. This began a mountain of organisation for the AC. Some girls reported having nightmares from the stress of it all. However, the Oxjam was pulled off AND IT WAS AWESOME. Then the year ended, and Annie and Anne, along with half of the AC left WEGC to attend university. This was slightly problematic.

But the Active Collective carried on into 2008, however no discernable leader arised. So the most worried and grumpy person in the group (myself) became the de facto 'leader', organising meetings and telling off people if they went to microwave noodles instead. After a few frankly excruciating 'election' meetings, they decided to have no specific roles within the group and to actually do something instead. And with a team of 15 awesome girls, there was nothing to stop them.

The End.

Well, sort of. Here's the list of stuff we've done so far this year:

- Had a speaker from Trade Aid come in about fair trade
- Set up a wall display promoting fair trade for Fair Trade Fortnight
- Had a Coffee Break, selling coffee and hot chocolate to raise money for Oxfam ($110)
- Made and sold bracelets made with fair trade beads to raise money for the victims of the cyclone in Burma ($120)
- Set up our own noticeboard to keep East aware of current issues and campaigns
- Got our own page on the new school website (when it goes live)

Awesomeness. But we can always do more to raise awareness. I though it would be cool for us to have a blog that anybody could visit, where people could vent their opinions about things in the world that are really pissing them off. Because that's what the AC's all about, isn't it?

All blog posts marked "The Active Collective" will be by me, Lily, the aforementioned 'leader' of the AC. These posts will mostly be about events or news regarding the AC and not opinion pieces. Any opinion pieces by me or anyone else contributing to this blog will be marked as "Lily", "Romana" etc.

Our bebo page is still our number one place for socialising or informal discussions for members, this is more of a public forum.

So get blogging! Comment in the section below if you would like to write for this blog.

As always, AC meetings are on Wednesday lunchtimes in Rm 56 and are open to anyone who is interested.

Peace

Lily