Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day Cyberkindness
11.11.09
River Room, House of Lords

Beside the loss of 20 million lives over four years
of the First World War —
the reason we commemorate Armistice Day —
the subject of bullying must seem inconsequential.
In this country I believe it claims around 20 victims under sixteen a year.
However, the two subjects are linked.

Act Against Bullying began with a Cool to be Kind campaign.
This was designed initially for five years olds
yet I’ve found myself explaining to ten year old boys from inner city schools
why manners, decency, compassion to others, are important.
I’ve illustrated this by saying
‘if you are intentionally rude or hurtful to someone they will want to hurt you back and if you grow up to be an ambassador or a leader of your country and you are intentionally rude or hurtful to an ambassador or a leader of another country you could well start a world war’. This has got the point across quite well.

Today — Remembrance Day, is also known in Belgium as the Day of Peace –
and there again is the link.
AAB actively campaigns to reduce aggression and counter bullying by creating peaceful campaigns such as Cyberkin and Cool to be Kind and Be Decent For A Day.
So while we’re still a small organisation
we share the same ideals as those larger charities
who remember the world conflicts today and their cost in human lives.

As of last month Act Against Bullying has been a registered charity for 6 years.
That might not seem that long to some
but to put it in perspective
back then there was no Twitter, no Facebook as we know it today.
At least the craze hadn’t happened.
AAB back then had a simple pink and black website
which promoted the anti-bullying monologues which were mailed out as hard copy
and a contact number for victims or parents to call.
Today, because of the expansion of the net
The AAB site now gets 600,000 hits a year.
That's around 2000 visits a week.
They're from 69 different countries
Our information, certificates, posters, downloaded by around 300 school annually
and Cool to be Kind Days have been held as far afield as Canada, Australia, Zimbabwe, Bangkok, even a men’s prison up North.
We even have our own growing advice channel on You Tube.

So, Act Against Bullying is a classic example of the positive aspects of the net.
We couldn’t operate at the same level without it.
We wouldn’t be here without it.
Working online has meant we don’t need overheads, flashy offices, paid staff etcetera to do the job we’re doing –
and it has meant we’ve got our information out to literally thousands of people for virtually nothing.

But Cyberbullying is not just the latest but also one of the cruellest methods of bullying and has brought misery to many.

Only last month I was consulted by Senator Wortley from the Australian Government over their problem . Five young people committed suicide recently in short succession of one another and the only tangible link ——a social networking site. She’d come over to the UK to seek solutions.

The problem with cyber bullying is its very hard to know
Where it begins and how to stop it.
Also that over half of young people today have social networking sites,
Many don’t report any form of abuse over the net for fear that they will anger their parents, worry their parents have their computers taken away.
And I for one am sympathetic there.
It’s not always the answer just to ban the net.
Social behaviour has changed. The net is today what a youth club, teenage get togethers were yesterday.

So that’s where CyberKind comes in.
Cyberkind is an experiment to try and flush out what’s actually going on in secret.
Next week AAB‘ll be at Westfield promoting the campaign, speaking with the public, trying to get feed back so we can help.

We’ve been pretty effective over the past six years.
Last year we were shortlisted for the Guardian Charity Award.
Occasionally we have been in trouble,
but bullying is very subjective, a difficult subject to address and to champion.

However, our aim is still the same
and that is to make sensible recommendations –
not always politically correct ones – to the relevant bodies, and to the media for example,
in order to help improve the quality of life, and quality of social life for our young people and their parents, their mothers, at times struggling to maintain faith in our society,
what was once one of the most compassionate and tolerant societies in the world.