This 16-Year-Old Is Raising Awareness About Sexual Harassment in High Schools and Colleges

In 2019, 16-year-old Thrisha Senthilnathan started an organization devoted to preventing and spreading awareness about sexual harassment in schools and colleges. Called “WE RISE ABOVE,” the organization started in Cerritos High School, which Senthilnathan attended, but since then, it has reached 43 different schools and consists of over 500 volunteers.

Thrisha Senthilnathan told the FBomb more about how WE RISE ABOVE began and what they do.

What inspired you to create WE RISE ABOVE?

At the time, around 2018, the Larry Nasser case regarding sexual violence against gymnasts was going on, and I thought, “What if these girls were able to identify what was happening [when it was happening], and they had that education of where to go and how to report it?” I was listening to a lot of them say, “I didn’t know that it wasn’t a medical practice.” I wanted to create a program or some type of educational material that could go out to students in schools — that was how the idea sparked, just [wanting to make] sure [young people] get the education that they deserve.

What does WE RISE ABOVE do?

We implement programs in schools to educate students about sexual violence and prevention. We do projects to engage with the community and help people who are in [sexual harassment] situations. We also work with a lot of survivor shelters.

What resources does WE RISE ABOVE offer?

In the past, we have worked with schools in doing awareness weeks and filmed videos to be displayed on the school’s broadcast. We’ve also done self-defense workshops, rallies, and assemblies. We also have different [smaller] projects in getting survivor stories out there. We have a podcast, [where we] we also do survivor spotlights.

We [also] offer a lot of different resources. For example, we do a lot of informational posts on our Instagram., We also hold maybe eight to ten workshops a month on different topics, and we have different people come speak at different high schools, and we also have survivors come and talk about their stories on our podcast. We do sell self-defense keychains … and we also do survivor shelter donations. We are really just trying to make sure we are getting all the community involved on this topic in different aspects and forms.

Coming up, we are having a self-defense workshop with our self-defense instructors. We are also having a “Work License Sexual Harassment Workshop,” which is about how to get out of situations at work without quitting or without getting fired. We are also having another workshop, I believe, on sexual harassment in college.

What was the biggest challenge you faced when you started WE RISE ABOVE?

I think the biggest challenge was getting people to take me seriously and also getting people to take the topic seriously. I know [sexual harassment] is a taboo [and] there is a stigma around it and people either don’t want to talk about it or they make jokes around it. It is also not really brought up or taught, so that was the hardest part of just making sure people were respecting my organization and also myself at the same time. Once people started gaining [an understanding] of what I was doing, they realized this was serious.

The organization has ambassadors. What do these ambassadors do and how does one become one?

We have two programs. We have the ambassador program and the volunteer program. [The ambassadors] work in the front face of WE RISE ABOVE and work on their own projects for WRA. They work with students directly in awareness weeks and workshops. The ambassador program is very selective, and they are very hands-on. We have a whole program of round interviews … because we want to make sure the ambassadors who are joining our organization are capable, responsible, and mature enough to handle situations. They do have to have a lot of responsibility and commitment. We only open those up quarterly.

But anyone can be a volunteer. They just go to our Instagram bio and they can volunteer anytime. We have five different teams, which include the Graphics team, the WRA Media team, our Community Outreach team, the Marketing and Public Outreach team, and also a Tech team.

Have you seen a difference in your high school since you started the group?

I would definitely say that more people take this topic much more seriously now. Of course, [at] first, I knew people who weren’t taking it seriously, but when the program kept going, people got more interested [and] more involved in it. They started following our Instagram page and staying updated with it because they noticed it was making a change in our community.

Do you know or have you heard of anyone who has been impacted by your organization?

There was actually this girl who was in a situation at work — it was her first job ever, she was 16, and she worked from 5:00 to 12:00 [p.m.]. She was alone at [her workplace] with an older man in his 60s. This guy was just alone with her in a room and he started touching her, and it felt very uncomfortable to her. She brought it up to me after she noticed in one of our awareness weeks that it wasn’t normal, and she asked me, ‘Hey Thrisha, what do I do about this?’ We kind of let it go for one to two days, but it kept getting worse, so that’s when we reported the case. It turns out that he had harassed around 16 other girls. So, through WRA, she was able to know what to do, where to go, and what resources and support [she had].

What do you think people should know about WE RISE ABOVE?

Because it’s a student-run organization, it’s a bunch of college students and high school students running this organization. We’re just people trying to provide information. We’re approachable and we respond to everyone. We interact with our community, and we want to make sure everyone is included. We just want to make sure people get this education. [We’re] a source where [young people can] come talk to us and they don’t have to feel like they’re being pressured by adults. We’re one of them. We can help them because we have the resources and the support to help. They can contact us at any time, and we will answer them 24/7.

You can follow WE RISE ABOVE on Instagram @weriseaboveofficial. You can also contact them through DM on Instagram or through their phone number (562) 353-8847. If you want to listen to their podcast, you can listen on their YouTube channel at WE RISE ABOVE; it will also be out on Spotify very soon as well. They will also be publishing a book called My Story: We Are Survivors, a Survivor Story Book, which is a collection of 20 to 30 survivor stories submitted anonymously to show others how common sexual harassment can be and that they are not alone.