A group of students from the Steinbach Regional Secondary School are hoping to take a stand and raise awareness for various human rights issues in the coming school year. 

Staff mentors have been working with students creating proposals for projects to be implemented next year to allow students to talk to other students about human rights. Topics cover Indigenous issues, Islamophobia, human trafficking and the rights of girls and women, the use of American sign language in schools and a proposed student-led human rights conference. Jackie Willis, a teacher at the SRSS, says the students presented their projects to a panel of consultants on Wednesday, which included, representatives from the Canadian Human Rights Museum, The Hanover School Division as well as SRSS student council. 

Sophia Stang, one of the students involved, did her project on human trafficking and notes this is a topic that is important to her. 

"We talked about a survivor from Steinbach and she was trafficked and it just hit home because of how close it was. It also hit home because one of the stats was that 50 percent of people are under the age of 16 which is my age, which is the age of everyone in this school. With that being said, all of us are in the age group of being pulled into that."

The students have now received feedback from the panel of consultants and Willis says each project could receive a grant of up to $5,000. Willis explains the next step.

"We got a lot of feedback, so now we're going to go back and revise our grant proposal and submit that by the end of the month in hopes of using that money, the first part will be for more inquiry for the students and then Sophia would like to head a campaign to raise awareness and for students to take action." 

The projects are to be implemented in the 2018-2019 school year.