Articles

Children in West Yorkshire Get Creative to Explore the Issue
of Cyber-Bullying

On 18 November around 150 children from primary and secondary schools in Kirklees, West Yorkshire attended an anti-bullying conference at Galpharm Stadium in Huddersfield. The focus of the day was cyber-bullying.

The conference was the idea of young people who take part in the Kirklees Young People's Forum. They designed the logo for the event and some of the workshops.

The children attended a variety of workshops presented by ChildLine, West Yorkshire Police, Barnardo's Missing Project and the NSPCC Shield Project and were engaged in a range of activities including drama, making badges and an anti-bullying pledge, creating a collage and a graffitti wall.

The NSPCC Shield Project, which works with children and young people who display sexually harmful behaviour, ran workshops to address bullying by text with the primary school age children and sexting for the secondary school age children.

Workshops were also presented by children from a local primary school and two secondary school students. What the children had to say about the event "I liked it a lot. I found it very helpful. Bullying is not a very nice thing." "I feel I have learned some important things and I have learned confidence and good manners." "It doesn’t matter what race you are, what colour you are or where you're from - we are all equal. It's important to share the message about cyber-bullying - it shouldn't happen to anyone.” The children will be taking the messages back to their schools - each school will be making its own pledges and repeating some of the other activities.