“Hope For Children’’ CRC Policy Center and Hellenic Bank joined forces to beat bullying

“Hope For Children” CRC Policy Center completed their collaboration for second year in a row with Hellenic Bank for raising awareness to the local community towards dealing with violence and bullying at schools. The “Peer Support Groups” program that was completed in May 2019 expanded in more schools due to the sponsorship received from Hellenic Bank.

The need to educate and provide children with necessary knowledge and life skills for dealing with various difficulties emerges from the ever-growing incidence of school bullying. These incidents are evident from school reports, parents, and the news.

The empowerment of children to fight school bullying strengthens school community. At the same time, a holistic approach of the phenomenon of school bullying is encouraged through the cooperation of stakeholders, teachers and the family.

Through “Peer Support Groups”, more adolescents had the opportunity to be trained by professionals in order to work as anti-bullying ambassadors and as peer supporters in schools. This idea is based on the philosophy that some messages are better transferred to children by other children or youth.

The main aim of the program is to provide students with not only knowledge about bullying, but mostly with life skills, which are useful in the long run for problem solving and dealing with various difficulties, apart from bullying. Also, through the experience it is expected that children will increase their ability to assert their basic rights for their protection from any kind of violence and abuse, for maintaining a good level of life and for participating in decision making.

The educational sessions last 12 weeks and consist of experiential activities that focus on four basic cores of skills:

1. Cooperation
2. Identification of the peer supporter quality characteristics
3. Communication and Active Listening
4. Problem solving 

The program was implemented with the approval of the Ministry of Education and Culture and it is assessed by the students through questionnaires handed before and after the training.