We are now recruiting pupils from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to become part of the 2025 Young Anti-Bullying Alliance (YABA).
Young Anti-Bullying Alliance (YABA) is our advisory group exclusively for young people. The purpose of this group is to influence our anti-bullying work, help us develop the messaging and campaign of Anti-Bullying Week 2025, and to provide general feedback on bullying to help us represent the views of young people to the wider ABA Membership.
Who are we looking for?
- 3 pupils from each school, aged 13 - 18 years.
- Children and young people who represent our diverse country. We are particularly looking to reach pupils who are most at risk of experiencing bullying including children with SEND, children on Free School Meals, young carers, looked after children, those from race and faith minority groups and LGBT young people.
- Pupils who are interested in working on a campaign to raise awareness of bullying, and to learn more about developing campaigns.
How would Young ABA work?
- We would deliver 6 meeting sessions from February – December in 2025. They will be a hybrid of in-person and online via Zoom. Here is a rough schedule:
- February: face-to-face
- April: online
- June: face-to-face
- September: online
- Late Oct / early Nov: face-to-face
- Early December: online
- We would hold sessions in term time, and ask that you as a school support your young people to attend these sessions, and check in with them about how it’s going.
- Face to face meetings will be held in Central London and different locations across NI within school hours (likely 11am – 2.30pm) and we ask that you send a member of staff with them to attend the meetings. We have limited funding to cover travel costs, but we don’t want to prohibit you from taking part so please do contact us if cost would be an issue for your school. Safeguarding during travel will be the responsibility of the school.
- In December, the 2025 group will graduate from Young ABA and we will recruit a new group for 2026.
What will young people get from taking part?
- Learning new skills through training, including: media training, social media marketing training, and anti-bullying training
- Influencing a nationwide Anti-Bullying Week campaign
- Potential to speak at events including at event with government Ministers
- Experiencing of creating content for social media, writing articles, analysing data and developing media press releases
If you think you have pupils who would be interested in putting themselves forward to be considered for joining the group, please fill out the form below by Friday 17th January 2025, 12pm
Application form for Schools in England and Wales
Application form for Schools in Northern Ireland
Please only fill out the form once you have identified a maximum of 3 young people in your school who have expressed their interest in joining.
Please note places are extremely limited. We will be in touch by the 24th January to confirm if your nominated pupils have been selected for the group. The first meeting will take place in February, with a confirmed date to be shared on 24th January.
Some of the 2024 cohort explaining why they wanted to get involved in Young ABA