Gabrovo Youth Center held a training seminar "Prevention and Protection from Harassment" on the occasion of the Pink Shirt Day. More than 120 students, together with their teachers and pedagogical advisers, from all Gabrovo secondary schools and high schools took part in it.
The speaker was Diyan Dankov - a lawyer by education, a person with many years of experience in working with young people and with projects related to discrimination and human rights. Through presentation, role-plays and exercises, he defined bullying in all its forms, drew attention to its manifestations that we even consider everyday, asked questions like should one respond to bullying with aggression, passivity as fueling and participating in bullying, talks about the power of words, about the people we can turn to if we are a victim of bullying. Participants had the opportunity to imagine themselves in different roles and give their assessment of different types of behavior.
A large number of students were scared and shared about their encounters with different types of bullying. They found out which words hurt the most, but also showed that they are well aware of who and which institutions to turn to for help in the presence of aggression and violence. They referred to the national child helpline 116 111, the State Agency for Child Protection, their educational advisors, teachers, parents and friends.
The workshop ended with a short video that described a social experiment - people of different nationalities were given DNA tests that found they had much more genes in common with each other than they thought. The message in the video presented traveling the world as one of the best ways for a person to discover that we are all alike and what separates us are the boundaries in our minds.
At the event, the young people had the opportunity to take from the specially made inspirational stickers of the Gabrovo Youth Center.
In fact, the event was provoked by an online survey conducted by the Youth Center - Gabrovo among young people. It showed that they need to talk about relationships between people, aggression and tolerance. It was bullying that was brought up as a topic that should be given serious attention. Over 70% of young people say they experience bullying at school. 11.7% admit that there is bullying in their families. 35.7% share that harassment in their friendly environment is a fact, although the manifestations of bad behavior in such an environment should be minimal.
The largest share – 86.2% of all who responded to the survey, witnessed bullying carried out by a student against another student. The next most indicated answer is "harassment of a person with a different sexual orientation" - 58.7%. According to the data, the participants in the survey often also witnessed bullying against a person of a different ethnicity (50.5%), bullying caused by a parent against a child (46.8%), as well as bullying by a man against a woman (42.2%). The answer added by the young people - "ex-boyfriend" is also impressive.
Young people think that the problem is quite serious, but they do not believe that it can be solved. They observe the behavior of their classmates on a daily basis and are of the opinion that it is necessary for change to start from the family environment and the early development of everyone. Building values and morals, empathy and tolerance are the basis of the prevention of this problem, because its limitation is directly related to the formation of individuals and their inner world as a constituent unit of the society that defines it.
