Schools, businesses take stand against bullying

By Jamie Rieger

Last week, staff from Family and Community Support Services delivered pink-frosted doughnuts to schools and businesses in Bow Island, Burdett, and Foremost as way to raise awareness to Stand Up to Bullying Day, a day when people are encouraged to wear pink shirts as their way of showing they are against bullying in the schools and workplaces.

National Bullying Awareness Week was Nov. 12-17, whereas International Day of Pink is typically held on the second Wednesday in April. It began at a high school in Nova Scotia when two students, Travis Price and David Shepherd, saw another student who was wearing a pink shirt, being bullied. The two intervened and stopped the bullying incident, but they took it further by getting everybody at the school to wear pink a few days later as a show of support and the school began working together to prevent homophobic bullying.

Bullying Awareness Week started in 2000 when Canadian Bill Belsey launched http://www.bullying.org.

The initiative has since grown to include bullying and discrimination in many forms; racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, agism, colonism, anti-Semitism, and more.

Corinna Roth-Beacome said she and staff delivered 58 dozen doughnuts to businesses and schools around the area last Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

“This was an opportunity for everybody to wear pink and stand up against bullying. The businesses and schools have been really great in supporting this,” she said.

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