Using anti-bullying week to up our kindness levels
It’s always a good time to talk about kindness and think about the ways we can be kinder to each other and ourselves, but in anti-bullying week, kindness seems particularly apt. During anti-bullying week, we worked with our young people at Amar House in an engaging group session on anti-bullying, using it as an opportunity to then embark on an exciting 7-day Kindness Challenge.
In our group session we explored and discussed the issue of bullying. We talked about what it means to be bullied, how it might feel to be bullied or witness someone else being bullied, or how it would feel to realise that we may have bullied someone. We watched the CBBC anti-bullying film: Nadiya’s bullying story to help us understand in more detail the issues and feelings we have around bullying, from listening to Nadiya’s first-hand experience.
Our young people were great at contributing to the discussion and gave lots of examples of different types of bullying, including cyberbullying, physical and verbal bullying. And even offered accounts of when they had personally witnessed someone being bullied or had been bullied themselves. What followed was a useful discussion for all of us about how bullying impacts on others, how it makes people feel and the reasons why people bully others. The discussion also really helped us to uncover ways of how we, personally, can help to prevent bullying from occurring in the future.
Kindness was one of the overriding themes that came from our discussion, and how kindness plays such a crucial part in counteracting bullying. So, we decided it would be appropriate and inspiring if we could end our session with all of us making one nice comment about each young person and team member.
Not stopping there, our young people agreed to continue thinking about kindness beyond the session, and undertake the 7-day kindness challenge, which involves a daily kindness question, and inspiration to carry out small acts of kindness that can make a big difference to others.
We can’t wait to hear how everyone got on!
We’re proud of our young people’s enthusiasm during what was a positive week thinking about anti-bullying and taking our kindness up a level. One of our young people said they were excited to get involved in the challenge and feel that it would be beneficial to continue this after the seven days, because one random act of kindness can so positively impact someone else’s day.