Translator: Monica Ronchi Reviewer: Denise RQ
This is me.
Alex, aged nine years old.
I look at myself, innocent and excited by everything,
but I can't help but get the urge to protect my younger self,
because at the age of just nine, I was already experiencing something
that many young people find themselves the victim of
at some early stage in their life -
bullying.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
It's a question we often ask ourselves
when we're looking back at painful or difficult times,
but today I can't help but wonder
what advice would my younger self give me,
and what might have happened, if I had listened?
I've learned to listen to and trust young people,
really listen,
to harness the power that young people have
to help each other understand, and to shape their world.
Now I work in schools to prevent bullying.
I've found that by far the most powerful technique
is the power of peer.
Schools and playgrounds are alive with the experts -
children.
They know better than us adults could ever hope to
about how to influence each other, shape attitudes and behaviors.
If we let young people take the lead in tackling bullying,
they can not only shape their culture, their school,
but hopefully, a better society.
A bit of context:
in the UK, we send 13 million children to school.
UNICEF states that there are over 2.2 billion children in the world,
and most of them go to school,
some willingly, some a little more reluctantly.
But by the time we are all 18,
we will have spent 11,000 hours of our life at school,
which exerts a huge amount of influence on our minds,
our behaviours, and our attitudes.
Actually by the time we're aged 18,
we would have spent more time with our peers than with our parents.
And studies show that young people
are far more likely to confide in their peers
than their educators or parents.
There is a deep current of information and experience
running just underneath the surface that adults are not aware of.
We need to understand that
in order to understand what is going on in our schools.
Because bullying is a problem,
and by far the biggest problem that is not talked about
when we forget to listen,
when the voices of young people are not heard.
I was bullied at school for being different.
For having a dad who was black,
and I would quite often go home in tears because of the racist abuse.
I felt alone, I felt like I didn't belong
and the place that I went to every single day,
was the place I dreaded going to every single day.
You can perhaps define bullying
as the victimisation of difference,
and in a school where there is a bullying culture,
difference is punished, and individuality is seen as weird.
It is those kids who dare to be different, think different, act different,
that are often on the receiving end of abuse.
And if those behaviors and attitudes
are allowed to go unchallenged in our playgrounds and our classrooms,
then it becomes the norm, and difference is no longer celebrated.
We are often told as adults, "Dare to be different,"
and that's a message that we need to be telling our young people more.
School is the perfect place for us
to teach about respecting and celebrating difference,
and to learn how to stand up to bullying.
We need to do something, because bullying is endemic.
In fact, England is particularly bad when it comes to bullying.
In a recent international comparison looking at countries across the world
we came bottom when it came to unhappiness
and school experience of bullying.
In fact, at the Diana Award, the organization that I work at,
we did some research in 2015,
where we polled 1,000 young people about their experience of bullying.
Here are some of the results.
42% told us that the bullying kept them up at night,
like Daniel, aged 11, from Derbyshire.
41% told us that the bullying resulted in them changing their eating,
like Millie, aged 16, in London.
And nearly 1 in 4, 24%, said that the bullying made them feel suicidal,
like Tom, aged 17, from Bedford.
Bullying is tragic.
It corrodes confidence,
and is it any wonder the worry and the depression
that these young people have to go through,
that many of them don't fulfil their full potential?
I still remember that time of being bullied at school.
And actually studies have shown
that it stays with you long into your adult life.
King's College found that those that had experienced bullying
at age 4 and 7 years old,
were much more likely
to be physically, psychologically, and mentally disadvantaged,
compared to those who had escaped bullying at school.
Many adults that I have spoken to have found it incredibly hard
to shake off that label, "victim."
So I suppose bullying not only becomes an issue
for our young people but for our adults too.
You can understand maybe why sometimes, as grown-ups,
we try and take control when a young person is being bullied.
We take over the situation.
We tell them what they should do, we go into school,
we sometimes even Facebook the bully's parents;
don't do that, it's not a good idea!
(Laughter)
And by doing that, we assume that we know best how to intervene,
and we limit the opportunity for those young people
to be able to solve this for themselves
and make a difference to their peers, their school, and their world.
When I was 16,
I had an idea that I wanted to test out
on my peers, my school, my world.
I was confused and isolated because of the bullying
but what I saw was a real lack of young people being empowered
to take the lead on changing things.
We didn't have a voice.
We were not part of the system that was created to, ironically,
keep us safe.
So with the support of my headteacher, I set about doing some research.
I collected hundreds of questionnaires, some of the stories were quite harrowing,
and I attended a Governors' Meeting which certainly opened up some eyes.
It was clear that my school was not doing enough about bullying.
I gave myself a job: Student Anti-Bullying Coordinator,
and with that came a mission to get the whole school on board
with tackling bullying.
This was about bringing the whole school,
and I decided we needed to recruit some former bullies.
These students were cheeky, confident characters
that were able not only to change their own behavior
but bring others on board,
and it made a real difference.
Here's another case point.
Levinson High School
was put in special measures because of bullying.
I was invited to come in and work with the students.
We trained them, listened to them, and helped them come up with simple ideas
like a pledge read out at every anti-bullying assembly
and patrols,
a "report abuse" button on every desktop,
and in less than a year, OFSTED came back,
and said that all students spoken to felt safe in the school.
This had been led by students.
It was those simple things that worked,
that didn't cost a lot of money,
like compliment days or smile days,
smile at the person next to you.
See, it works!
(Laughter)
And these things changed the ethos and the culture of the school,
and as a result, students felt empowered,
they felt part of the solution and not part of the problem.
As awareness of the program began to grow,
and knowledge of these anti-bullying ambassadors
that I created in my school,
I was invited by the government to come and talk to them,
with a group of young people, about what we were doing.
So I did.
The government listened, learned, and loved it,
and as a result,
a few years later,
I was a teen with a full-time job
from something that had been a passion.
There are now 18,500 anti-bullying ambassadors
in the UK and Ireland whose job it is to make sure
that people are safe online and offline.
My advice to teachers, to young people,
to parents, or teachers co-create your anti-bullying policy with students.
Get their buy-in from the start, then it becomes their rules,
and they're much more likely to follow them.
Parents, go home today and ask your child
how they would like you to deal with bullying
if they ever reported it to you.
Don't take over the problem, instead, give them some of that power back
and work with them to come up with a solution.
And young people, don't forget just how powerful you are,
and how your peers rely on you.
You can make a huge difference
in shaping attitudes and changing behaviors.
In the ten years or so that I have been doing this work,
I have seen bullying rise up the political agenda.
Even royalty has come on board.
I've seen young people driving this change,
difference being celebrated and not stifled,
and attitudes are changing.
So what would the 9-year-old me have said?
Well, a few years later, he did dare to be different,
and unfortunately for him,
some of our youngest ambassadors are now just five years old.
I dared to be different.
I took control back, and as a result,
there are now thousands of young people across the UK and Ireland
that are really changing lives for other people.
Thank you.
(Applause)