Find out what our very first Young ABA group achieved in 2022.
Meeting 1: Thursday 27th April 2022
We had a fantastic first meeting with our very first Young ABA group!
We spent a while getting to know each other and playing some ice breaker games, before giving the group some anti-bullying training and talking about Children's Rights. We used a shared jamboard as part of our discussion and you can see some of our young people's brilliant ideas below:
Jamboard screenshot from our first YABA meeting
Meeting 2: Friday 20th May 2022
In our second meeting, our Young ABA group were given some social media marketing training in preparation for working on the Anti-Bullying Week campaign with us.
We then moved on to discussing our All Different, All Equal project, and our group of young people gave us their thoughts and opinions about appearance-targeted bullying, and what they thought schools should be doing to reduce and prevent it. This will feed in to the training we will create as part of the project.
Meeting 3: Friday 17th June 2022
Our third Young ABA meeting continued our discussion about appearance-targeted bullying. This time we focused on the factors that contribute to this type of bullying, such as social media:
Jamboard screenshort from our June YABA meeting
We also spent some time talking about this year's Anti-Bullying Week: Reach Out. Not only did we think about ways in which schools could make changes to ensure all pupils feel comfortable and confident reaching out, but we also had a fun chat about which celebrities and influencers we would love to see getting involved in the campaign this year!
Meeting 4: Wednesday 6th July 2022
In our last meeting of the academic year, we started by looking at and discussing the roles involved in bullying. We looked at an example scenario and talked through who we thought was representing which role:
Jamboard screenshot from our July YABA meeting
We then focused in on the role of 'reinforcer' and discussed the different types of reinforcer that might exist, and what might help them to step away and become a bystander (or even a defender).
We then moved on to talk one more time about appearance-targeted bullying, this time focusing on 'lookism', and talking through some case studies from Heather Widdows' #EverydayLookism campaign. Our young people have given us lots of really useful input for building our All Different, All Equal online training!
We are now breaking for the summer and our next meeting will be in the new academic year on 8th September 2022.
Meeting 5: Thursday 8th September 2022
It's our first meeting back of the new school term! This month we turn to Anti-Bullying Week plans now that November is beginning to creep up on us.
We spent some time discussing ideas for social media activity during the week, and the kinds of things we could ask celebrities, influencers and the general public to do and get involved with in an attempt to get lots of engagement and exposure for Anti-Bullying Week. Watch this space on our social media accounts for some fun activities!
We finished the session with some media training from our media expert at the National Children's Bureau, Richard Newson. Richard gave us some really useful tips on how to prepare and carry out media interviews in preparation for any media opportunities that might arise during Anti-Bullying Week.
Meeting 6: Wednesday 5th October 2022
In our October meeting, we did some more chatting about Anti-Bullying Week, and our YABA members gave us some handy recommendations about influencers and celebrities that we can try to target to get involved!
We then moved on to a new project we're working on focusing on supporting young people who bully and ways of discouraging bullying behaviour. It's a tricky subject to discuss and our young people did a fantastic job of handling it thoughtfully, and contributed some really useful ideas. We're going to continue our work on this subject in our next meeting.
Meeting 7: Tuesday 8th November 2022
It's our penultimate meeting with our 2022 cohort, and we first returned our attention to our work on children who bully. We had a really productive and interesting discussion which was a huge help for our plans on this project.
We then moved on to talk about plans for Anti-Bullying Week 2022, and our Young ABA members shared some lovely 'Reach Out' stories with us.
Finally, we asked the young people the question: 'What does ABA mean to you?' as part of our 20th birthday celebrations, and had some lovely responses:
Jamboard screenshot from our November YABA meeting
Meeting 8: Wednesday 7th December 2022
Our final meeting with our Young ABA 2022 group! We were all sad to say goodbye, but not before another jam-packed, productive session!
For our final meeting, we first cast our minds back and took a moment to appreciate the things we have acheived together:
- Developed knowledge and understanding of Anti-Bullying work.
- Social media marketing training.
- Media training.
- Developed our new appearance-targeted bullying training course for school staff.
- Helped with our Anti-Bullying Week 2022 campaign plans.
- Gave us lots of valuable ideas for our work on children who bully.
Our young members then gave us lots to think about for 2023. They began by telling us what they think the Anti-Bullying Alliance's priorities should be for 2023, and went on to leave an important message of encouragement and advice for our Young ABA 2023 group, explaining what they would like to pass on to them next year. This message will be shared with our new group once it's set up in the new year. One of our favourite parts was reading the things our young people are proud of this year:
Screenshot from our December meeting Jamboard
We are very proud and very grateful for all our Young ABA members have given us this year to help us to unite against bullying - thank you YABA 2022!