Italianistica, Didattica Innovativa, Internazionalizzazione

👊 Today is International Anti-Bullying Day! Check out these inspiring resources about:

🔵 The Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme 🔗 https://t.co/35Vz7jzFCg
🟠 The Anti-Bullying Alliance🔗 https://t.co/ZHYCEhhjIP
🔵 KID_ACTIONS & cyberbullying🔗 https://t.co/RdxXXaVBna pic.twitter.com/8dQUiNIu9f

— eTwinningEurope (@eTwinningEurope) May 4, 2024

Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme: empowering youth in the UK

The Diana Award Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme engages young people, parents and teachers to change the attitudes, behaviour and culture of bullying by building skills and confidence to address different situations, both online and offline. 

Since 2011, over 54,000 young people have been trained by The Diana Award to stand up to bullying as Anti-Bullying Ambassadors in their schools. The programme is a year-long journey, which includes initial training and ongoing support to equip young people with the skills, confidence and knowledge to be an upstander to all forms of bullying behaviour. Ambassadors educate their peers on bullying behaviour, lead anti-bullying campaigns, promote a culture that celebrates and tolerates difference, and help keep their peers safe both online and offline.

There are useful free resources available, aimed at students, staff and parents, that cover all anti-bullying topics, from LGBTQ+ awareness to digital well-being, mental health and body shaming.

The Diana Award charity is based on the belief that young people have the power to change the world. Its mission is to empower young peopleto lead that change through a range of initiatives that unlock their potential, inspire action and create opportunities, ensuring that no young person is left out or left behind.

Anti-Bullying Alliance: creating safer environments for children and young people

Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) is a unique coalition of organisations and individuals working together to achieve their vision to stop bullying and create safer environments in which children and young people can live, grow, play and learn.

The alliance was established by the NSPCC and the National Children’s Bureau in 2002. It shares best practices through membership and raises awareness of bullying through the Anti-Bullying Week and other campaigns.

ABA’s objectives are:

• to maintain the high profile of the problem of childhood bullying, the impact it has and increasing the evidence base for tackling it;
• to provide a climate in which stakeholders are committed to and proactively working towards preventing and responding to bullying of all children and young people;
• to provide school leaders, teachers, youth practitioners, parents, children and young people with evidence-based skills and knowledge to address bullying effectively.

ABA runs the United Against Bullying programme, and several other programmes that are focused on specific aspects of bullying behaviour. It also offers a free online training course on anti-bullying.

KID_ACTIONS: tackling cyberbullying through interactive education and gamification

Cyberbullying is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means, particularly online. It includes sending, posting or sharing negative, harmful, false or mean content about another person. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers, and can sometimes cross the line into unlawful or criminal behaviour.

The KID_ACTIONS project (2021-2022) aimed to address cyberbullying among children and adolescents through interactive education and gamification in formal and non-formal learning settings. It set out to understand the cyberbullying phenomenon, to present co-creative and evidence-based approaches to combat cyberbullying, and to advocate for increased cross-border and cross-sectional cooperation.

The project aimed to:

• empower young people to recognise and react effectively against cyberbullying;
• encourage victims to report their experiences;
• foster a wider dialogue and to adopt a co-creative and evidence-based approach for preventing and countering cyberbullying through education;
• strengthen cross-border coalition building through the KID_ACTIONS Lab (advisory group).

The KID_ACTIONS educational toolkit contains a set of 20 activities for children aged 11-19 aimed at understanding, preventing and responding to cyberbullying, and for developing social-emotional learning skills. The project also produced policy recommendations. The materials are available in English, French and Italian.

Further reading

Webinar: Educational toolkit – EN

Educational Toolkit – EN, FR, IT

Policy recommendations – EN, FR, IT

EU Policy, Research and Practitioners Forum – EN

Conference papers – EN

KID_ACTIONS detailed description (PDF) – EN