Wed 30 Mar 2011 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The men's (left) and women's (right) Mr Vintage design Special edition Pink Shirt Day t-shirts have gone on sale bearing the message “keep the peace – stop bullying”. Pink Shirt Day on 14 April is a global anti-bullying initiative and New Zealanders are encouraged to do their part by wearing pink to raise awareness of bullying and take a powerful stand that bullying should not be tolerated anywhere, no matter what the reasons or circumstances are. For the second year in a row Mr Vintage has teamed up with queer youth support organisation Rainbow Youth to release a special edition t-shirt. This year’s ‘Peace Crest’ has a black men’s t-shirt with a hot pink print and a women’s pink shirt with black print. The shirts are currently available on a special $20 deal from the Grab One website and will go up on the Mr Vintage site on Friday. Twenty five per cent of the returns from the sales will go to Rainbow Youth. Letter writing campaign As part of Pink Shirt Day, people around the country are being asked to write to Prime Minister John Key calling for compulsory education regarding sexual and gender identities, as an initiative of the Queer Youth Caucus from the Outgames Human Rights Conference. “In many New Zealand schools the needs of queer students are completely disregarded, a direct violation of their human rights. All individuals are entitled to certain basic rights under any circumstances, the most fundamental of which is the right to physical and emotional safety,” the group says. The caucus wants to present at least 1,000 letters to the Government on Pink Shirt Day. You can find the template here. GayNZ.com will be giving away a Pink Shirt Day tee, so keep a close eye on our competitions page.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 30th March 2011 - 1:50pm