Help at hand for bullying victims with new online initiative
A new online platform is here to offer support from experts and peers to children and teenagers aged 10-18 who are victims of bullying.
The innovative program, Live Without Bullying, is being implemented for the first time in Greece and is aimed at managing and finding solutions to instances of bullying, whether online or at school. The specially designed platform allows children to talk – confidentially and anonymously – about their concerns with trained counselors, peers or older students who have undergone special training to respond to their needs.
Logging on to www.livewithoutbullying.com is very simple and the site extremely user-friendly. The victim needs simply to register using any name and set a password.
Live Without Bullying was created by the Athens-based KMOP Center for the Care of Children and Families, in cooperation with the Department for Adolescent Health of the P&A Kyriakou Children’s Hospital and the Enable program run by the European Union.
The platform also educates teachers and children about bullying and allows them to exchange views and seek practical tips from professional psychologists, who also monitor all discussions on the private forum.
The aim of the initiative is to help children to deal with adverse situations by talking openly and honestly about their ordeals and to receive positive feedback from their peers.
The use of peers counseling for troubled children and teens has already proven a success elsewhere and the aim of the program is to offer a holistic approach to children and adults (parents and teachers) to the problem of bullying by providing a separate communication forum for each category.
The use of poetry as a response to hate talk on the Internet is one of the campaigns that the Greek Center for Safer Internet promoted in observance of February 9, which was Safer Internet Day around the world.
The event was organized with the support of the European Parliament office in Greece and Google as part of the Youth4Greece initiative.
