Working Together to Stop Bullying Erasmus Project

Project Title

Working Together to Stop Bullying

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Access for disadvantaged; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The project addresses the complex phenomenon of bullying behaviour among young people in their schools, local environment and online platforms. While some countries have adopted anti-bullying policies and guidelines, that is not the case everywhere. For example, such policies do not exist in two of the partner countries (Armenia and North Macedonia). Also, the existing methods for addressing this issue need to be constantly adapted to the new circumstances and forms in which bullying occurs, as well as adjusted to the local needs/environment. Moreover, there is no coordinated approach against bullying and these measures are usually only implemented in the schools (by school teachers/administration) rarely relying on cooperation with civil society. Considering this, the project focuses on developing a comprehensive approach in confronting bullying behaviour.

The aim of the project is creating a comprehensive approach for addressing the issue of bullying in the educational system in the partner countries based on European best practices which will be adapted to their local context. Its goals are:

– to identify key gaps within the institutional response towards bullying within each partner country in order to develop a tailored approach to address these issues;
– to share practices among the partner organisations for dealing with the phenomenon of bullying by creating an international online platform;
– to train 24 teachers and youth workers to develop competences for identifying cases of bullying and to apply the adopted methodology in an efficient manner;
– to raise awareness of the school staff/administration and the youth about the detrimental effect of bullying on the mental health and well-being of the young people, as well as the sensitivity – of dealing with this problematics;
– to enhance the capacity of (i) youth organisations/youth workers; (ii) young people within the schools (peer-to-peer approach) to provide additional support to the students affected by bullying.

As part of the project, a set of carefully designed activities will be implemented:
– analysis report on current practices and gaps in addressing bullying behaviour with future recommendations;
– training course on implementing Shared Concern Method on bullying;
– implementation phase focusing on confronting bullying in schools;
– follow-up meeting on the lessons learned and future steps;
– creating and launching an online platform against bullying.

The project will result in the following outputs:
– Report Analysis (conducted throughout the entire project duration) will target: (i) the current experiences with the issue of addressing bullying in different countries (including where the SCM has already been implemented); (ii) the existing gaps in confronting bullying; (iii) the possibility to include civil society organisations/youth workers/youth leaders for the purpose of developing a comprehensive approach; (iv) how to implement the SCM and anti-bullying policies in countries that have not dealt with this phenomenon (Armenia and North Macedonia). This analysis report is very innovative and, as far as the preliminary research of the project team goes, no document of this scope and scale has been produced thus far.

– Interactive Online Platform against Bullying will be developed because there is no existing tool/platform in such a format. It will establish a fora where many new anti-bullying projects and activities will be initiated in the future. It will serve as a resource toolkit for the SCM method materials tailored to the needs of the communities from the partner countries. Also, it will allow the participants to share their gathered experiences, insights and best practices from the implementation phase, as well as the conclusions made during the follow-up meeting. The output will have a significant transferability potential as the platform will be open not only to the project participants, but also their peers/colleagues (including the ones from other countries).

The project will have a significant impact on local, regional and European level. From a local perspective, it will address the issue of bullying by raising awareness about this problem among all relevant stakeholders. From a regional aspect, the project will tackle the issue of enhancing the capacities of organisations to tackle bullying in different regions in Europe and beyond. On a European level, the effect of the project will be twofold. First, it will create a link between organisations which work on the issues of bullying in the EU with their counterparts from the Western Balkans and the Caucasus. This will set the way for new forms of cooperation on both personal and institutional level. Second, it will rely on tools, approaches and good practices implemented in some EU countries and modify them to be context-specific to the partner countries.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129794 Eur

Project Coordinator

MOJU – ASSOCIACAO MOVIMENTO JUVENILEM OLHAO & Country: PT

Project Partners

• YOUTH FOR EXCHANGE AND UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL AISBL
• ARMENIAN PROGRESSIVE YOUTH NGO
• CENTER FOR INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE ASSOCIATION