BULLYING: The Vision Organization; Smiling starts here.

Our project focuses on the betterment of social and educational experience for children by eliminating a major impediment in this endeavor: bullying.

WHAT IS BULLYING? Bullying is something that is done to hurt people physically or non-physically for many different reasons and may lead to severe consequences. There are many types of bullying: physical, verbal, cyber. Each type is just as difficult to deal with as the rest.

INEFFECTIVE METHODS OF PREVENTING BULLYING There are many ineffective ways of preventing bullying. Policies like the zero tolerance and the “three strikes and you’re out” are both policies made to prevent bullying, but they don’t do their job. Although these policies may work on small cases, studies show that it isn’t effective as a broad-based policy. It may also discourage the students from reporting incidents. To focus on bullying by in-service training, school assemblies and lessons taught by individual teachers is far less effective than taking a school-wide initiative.

EXAMPLES OF BULLYING A gay Ottawan teen named Jamie Hubley committed suicide after being bullied; bullies had tried to shove batteries down his throat in addition to constant verbal abuse.

BULLYING IN CANADA in a recent study, every 1 in 7 children from ages have been bullied - 6% of all students in Canada bully others on a daily basis - Canada may be multicultural and diverse, but despite this, bullying is present in every school, and it is time to take a stand against it

WHY BULLYING? We picked the project because it is a local issue that personally affects us and our daily lives. Bullying creates a very negative environment for everyone. Our goal is to help both the bully and the victim by helping the bullies deal with life in a more supportive and positive way. We also hope to bring the school together by helping students work and interact with each other.

WHAT WILL WE DO? Our main goal is to help kids to learn how to avoid negative actions. We want to teach them that their energy can be spent on positive things and make them feel proud of themselves. We want to help the kids and bullies cooperate together. This will be done by leading the school in a united and organized mural project called “PAINT AGAINST HATE” in which all students – including the bullies – will participate and contribute a part of their heart to the mural. This allows everybody to work together, create a teamwork-based atmosphere, helps bullies see their positive abilities, and also helps the surrounding communities to see their educational facilities’ efforts and become more involved in their environment. However, not all schools are based in artistic talents, and not all schools have a ready space for a mural; therefore, we have come up with alternate solutions to connect with other schools. For instance, for athletically-based schools, or for schools with particularly brutal bullies, we would organize a sports team (e.g. wrestling, football, rugby) to help the kids in that school to work together as a team, and to let them take their anger out in a more appropriate manner. In another example, for bullies with musical talents, our organization’s musically talented instructors can conduct an orchestra and this helps the bullies to come together as one.

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST? 20 big paint brushes – ~$16.99 each x 20 = $ small paint brushes - ~$9.99 each x 20 = $ rollers (handle and roll) - $11.20 each x 10 = $ Designable jersey (unspecified amount) - $40.00 each Paint (for 1 mural) – $ in total, 3 x 16oz for each color (differing costs for each color) Food – food is provided by the Blepoyowakto Philanthropic Foundation, and other large businesses generally provide supplies for non-profit organizations’ causes Transportation from school to school is provided by the Blepoyowakto Philanthropic Foundation.

HOW WILL VOLUNTEER HOURS BE SPENT? We are estimating that the mural will take around 5 days. This crosses over during school time and can also be worked on after school. We will have our volunteers and administrators/staff of the school supervise the children while they are working on the mural. Parents who wish to help their child or on the project in general are also taken into consideration. Assuming we have 8 members, each member of our organization will spend around 8 hours helping the campaign, whether that lies in advertising, creating posters to put up around the school, setting up the mural location, handing out refreshments or simply supervising. We are estimating around 99 person hours will be spent at each school. Though there are over 1000 primary and secondary schools in British Columbia alone, we wish to start off with 1000 schools, bringing our total to 99,000 person hours. Using this benchmark we can consider how many more person hours or how many more volunteers to add to the organization following the launch of this project, since spreading the message to other regions of Canada would be preferable.

INDICATORS It is quite easy to see whether the project has seen effectiveness or not; if the mural lasts and stays up for a long time, then it will be clear that the students are proud of their work. The mural will represent their effort, their cooperation, and their friendship.