Why is the project needed?

Approximately 160,000 teens skip school every day because of bullying, in Europe. Physical bullying increases in elementary school, peaks in middle school and declines in high school. Daily, calls relative to the bullying phenomenon to the National Helpline for Children SOS 1056 increases. Parents, teachers and students ask for advices on managing these phenomenon, feeling very often trapped. Recognize and respond early and effectively to behaviors that can lead to bullying through information, awareness and training are first and essential steps that must be done to cope with this pan-European problem. The project aims to prepare children to recognize and respond effectively to early bullying behavior avoiding to affect their emotional status. Create an environment where everyone understands that bullying behaviors are unacceptable, harmful, and preventable. Empower beneficiaries to intervene to prevent and stop bullying. Bullying includes: Hits, threats, intimidation, teasing, nicknames, mockery, spread rumours excluding victims from different social and school activities, sexual harassment or damage to the personal belongings of the victim.

The overall objective of the project is to create an innovative educative and informative program for prevention and sensitization school communities regarding school violence and bullying in order to reduce the school dropout.

What are the project objectives?

The specific objectives of the project are therefore to:

  1. The utilization of the shadow theatre heroes with the use of audio-visual & ICT tools for the education and information of target groups regarding bullying.
  2. Development of training material based on the audio-visual & ICT tools and conduction of training seminars & webinars in order the target groups of the project to develop new skills that will enable them to managing of bullying.
  3. Conduction of informative campaign for informing target groups about the new tools and methodology of managing bullying in schools.

What does the project address?

The project is structured so that results directly benefit three target groups:

  1.  The final users: children and teachers. Teachers will be directly involved in the project activities through training and education in interactive way and children will be able to learn through playing and explore their personal capacities.
  2. School responsibles and experts in the educational sector: social workers, educational institutions, psychologists also participating in the production of outputs, surveys, and the elaboration of results, factors of failure – risks - assumptions, consultants and supporting staff from all partners.
  3. Partner organisations and cooperating stakeholders, at local, regional and national level.

What does the project offer?

Based on primary and secondary research and thorough need analysis, it will be developed innovative activities in education, awareness and training addressed to children, educators - teachers, parents and professionals of the private and public sector, in a consolidated effort to tackle bullying and set up stronger antibullying activities. The main activities and outputs are

  1. Production of a video presenting a bullying story containing antibullying reaction from the victim, using the traditional shadow theatre heroes of Karagkiozis, Veligkekas, and Kollitiria. Its purpose is to aware, inform and educate on bullying and antibullying activities combining modern with traditional, putting in evidence values and attitudes, an international effort.
  2. Teachers' training of primary and secondary schools, at school, for information / education and awareness. Development of training methodology, on terms of children's rights, social values, influences.
  3. Production of an e-game using shadow heroes, containing different levels of difficulty as learning tool for values of self-respect, and respect for others, personal integrity, violence, children rights, family, friends and society as key influences on a young person.

Introduction

Pr.E.P.E.I. is a multi- layered and innovative project aiming at prevention and sensitisation of school communities regarding school violence and bullying in order to reduce the school dropout. Literature suggests that students involved in a bullying incident, whether as a victim, bully or bystander, are at risk of developing a number of psychosomatic symptoms, emotional and behavioural difficulties as well as health problems in later years (Srabstein, J.C. & Leventhal B. L., 2010). Given that the safety and well-being of the child is threatened, bullying can violate a child’s right for survival, development, protection and participation.

In the framework of the project have been developed four concrete tools for educators:

1. Video game using shadow theatre heroes,

2. Video using the traditional shadow theatre heroes,

3. Training manual with guidelines how to use the video,

4. Webinars dealing with violence among students,

All the above tools are user friendly for educators that are interested to coordinate the training and develop skills in managing bullying by providing information, ready to use materials and a step-by-step description of the procedure.

 

Structure and Content

The first part of the project offers a video game using shadow-theatre heroes as a learning tool for Children’s Rights, values of self-respect and respect for others, personal integrity, violence,  family, friends and society as key influences on a young person.

This video game helps children to learn about their rights, as specified under the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, which sets the standards on survival, development, protection and participation. The e-game consists of 4 different games, with different levels of difficulty across all four abovementioned areas of child-protection. The video-game could be used as an engaging, introductory, ice-breaking activity for students in order to become familiar with their rights, understand the aspects that are violated in a bullying incident and at the same time to introduce Karagkiozis’ figures and become familiar with the basic characters of the videos that will be presented in the second part of the project.

The second part of the project offers a series of videos presenting a bullying story, using the traditional shadow theatre heroes of Karagkiozis, Morfonios and Stavrakas. Its objective is to aware, inform and educate about bullying as well as to provide hands-on resources to parents, teachers and other professionals. To support teachers when working with the Karagkiozis’ videos in classroom, we have developed an extensive manual enriched with anti-bullying activities. Target audience is students from primary and secondary education (8-14 years old).

Educators and other stakeholders who are interested in the implementation are offered a  4-hour group training, where they become familiar with the tool through experiential activities. A series of 12 webinars are also offered through the Pr.E.P.E.I. Project YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx7OSY6aIHSsXK_gzkh8yOA . The objective of each webinar is to inform about different aspects of violence among students, aiming to provide teachers, professionals and other stakeholders expertise in dealing with violent behavior in the school environment.