Kate MacMurchy knew kids were being bullied and knew it was bad, but she didn’t know how she could help.
But then she heard about the RespectED program, a Canadian Red Cross initiative that involves high school students mentoring younger students on what they can to do to alleviate bullying.
“I decided that bullying was becoming a more and more prevalent issue in today’s society, and I had heard about many suicide attempts from bullying before I had started with the program, and I felt so lost. I had no idea what I could do to help,” Kate says.
Today, Kate is a youth facilitator – one of the New Westminster Secondary School students who go into local elementary schools and talk with Grade 6 and 7 students about bullying.
The group works on tackling the issue year-round, but in February it’s all about raising funds to help their campaign through the sales of pinks shirts.
As of Monday afternoon, Kate says they had sold about 700 pink shirts for students to wear Wednesday (today).
“All of the proceeds are staying within the … the RespectED program, specifically, so we will be able to train more youth facilitators and spend more time meeting and discussing our presentations, which will ultimately benefits the kids who receive the presentations,” Kate says.
The Pink Shirt anti-bullying initiative was started by a couple of teens in Nova Scotia, who organized a high-school protest to wear pink in sympathy with a Grade 9 boy who was being bullied. That event spawned an anti-bullying initiative in which people wear pink on a single day each year to help end bullying.
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