Monaghan Community Forum YELP Project in conjunction with Youth Work Ireland Monaghan Youth Information recently held two Bullying and Cyberbullying Awareness talks in the Enterprise Centre Castleblayney. The YELP project, Youth Encouraging Living Peacefully is part financed by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund through the PEACE III Programme and funded through Monaghan PEACE III Partnership.
One of the actions in the project is about Diversity Awareness and it is well known that being seen as different can often lead to bullying. Cyberbullying in particular has received lots of media coverage in the recent past. Therefore it was decided to organize awareness talks for youth workers, teachers, community workers and parents. Jim Harding and Kevin Deering from Bully4u, who provide anti-bullying services, delivered two separate presentations. Both presentations were extremely interesting with some frightening and very challenging statistics and stories. Afterwards most of the questions and comments were about the widespread use and misuse of the internet and social networking sites and also about the “digital footprint” left behind recording peoples activities online. People learned about what abbreviations used on line might mean. Very interestingly, it was learned that POS means “Parent Over Shoulder”.
The earlier session was very well supported by staff and volunteers who work with young people such as youth workers, teachers and school staff from across Co. Monaghan and beyond. Attendees included Chair of Monaghan VEC Joe McGrath and Cllr Sean Conlon. Although the number of parents attending the second session was smaller it was obvious that they were all keenly interested in the subject. Everyone who attended learned something new that they can hopefully put into practice to help prevent young people being bullied and deal with issues that might arise. A big thank you to Bully4u for giving the talks, to Melissa Mackin from Youth Work Ireland-Monaghan who co-hosted the event and to Castleblayney Enterprise Centre.
