Here’s an idea

Prevention involves raising awareness and confidence, whether that’s at school, on the streets or at home.

Our project started because I’d done work on self-esteem and bullying in schools and youth clubs.

We thought we’d try t0 work up something for primary school children that was a little bit different – more interesting than a classroom talk.

The anti-bullying pack that we send out to schools was developed after we talked to youngsters about games they enjoyed playing – we wanted to capture their imagination.

We had a £1000 ODPM grant to develop the pack, which so far has gone out to five schools and seven youth clubs in two months.

We cover 5000 homes so we’re still developing it and making sure it gets to more schools, youth clubs and church groups.

There’s one game where you put a rope around the edges of a room and get children to run to various points marked on it. These might be labelled “home”, “school”, “shops” and so on, and at each one they’ll have an imaginary incident of bullying to deal with.

They have to think about how to tackle it and who to talk to – the aim is to get a discussion going.

This has so much more impact than a traditional lesson. The children jump around and they enjoy while they learn. It’s something they’ll remember.