Hello, my name is Brian Donnelly and I am the Director of Respectme, Scotland’s anti-bullying service. We have been going since 2007 and November 2011 saw us take part and lead on activity in anti-bullying week in Scotland again.

Every year we use this week to highlight and reflect on some of the anti-bullying work being done in Scotland and usually launch an awareness raising campaign at the same time. We decided against using it as a week to encourage specific activity in classrooms and youth clubs but to use the week to highlight what is going on 52 weeks of the year. And focus on the challenges we continue to face.

We have since been out and about giving prizes to the winners of the national anti-bullying week competition, we still have a few more to go but as ever these have been incredible! Our 5th conference was a huge success, 180 people attended and the feedback shows how much delegate’s value longer time in workshops and young people’s inclusion, and most importantly young people tell us they value being included.

We are campaigning this coming year to raise awareness about cyberbullying and our campaign message is designed to change the way adults see the internet and how young people use it – if we can do that then adults can support young people when they are experiencing bullying online.

The message was ‘She’s still going somewhere…’ asking adults to think of the internet as a place, not a thing, another social space they hang out and meet their friends. The posters and video were a huge success. The purpose of these is to drive people to the website to get further information and access training and resources. We got four times as many visitors last month so that shows this method works.

With a renewed focus on the National Approach to Anti-Bullying supported by a letter from the Minister for Learning , Science and Scotland’s Languages, Dr Alasdair Allan we look forward with confidence to another busy and productive year here at respectme. 

Brian Donnelly
Director, Respectme
http://www.Respectme.org.uk/

p.s. You can view the video from last year’s campaign here http://bit.ly/snhR2z