Rising above the hate
Two best friends use their love of technology to fight hate online
The internet can be a dangerous place for young people, and sometimes other kids pose the biggest threat.
One in three Canadian kids experience online bullying. So, last year, two students at Sir John A. Macdonald Public School in Mark ham, ON, decided to take up the cause to get everyone to be kinder online.
It started when the 13-yearolds, Divij Dhoofar and Shrey Dhingra, were thumbing through their teacher’s WE Schools Kit, looking for their next campaign.
The two best friends are members of their school’s WE Club, and for the last three years they’ve raised funds and awareness for faraway causes like global poverty and access to clean water in developing countries. That day, they found out about WE Rise Above, a WE campaign, made possible by TELUS, aimed at an issue that truly hit home: cyberbullying.
Shrey often saw kids being picked on at recess—and he’d do his best to step in. But the year before, some older studentsa this school created fake Instagram accounts for their classmates and began sharing deeply personal details, while pretending to be them.
“Thankfully, we caught it before it got out of hand,” says teacher and WE Club coordinator Kathrine Moore. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”
The two technology-loving seventh graders decided to organize a schoolwide video competition and use the same social platform that students were being bullied on to get classmates talking about the issue.
“We wanted to make people more aware and become kinder—to not bully, basically,” says Divij.
Throughout the month of May, students were invited to film and edit a short video about cyberbullying and present it to a panel of judges. The best one would be shown at the school assembly at the end of the month.
They announced the competition and 10 of their classmates signed up right away, but that was it. No one else seemed interested. So Divij and Shrey changed tactics. They started going from grade to grade, with presentations customized for each age group, to pitch their idea. They also held meetings at recess with other kids, and even created a larger presentation for the whole school and showed it at assembly.
Their efforts paid off. Teams from across the school, some as young as the second grade, signed up for the competition. The two boys spent the next month brainstorming ideas, giving technical advice and teaching filming and editing skills to 60 kids in the school.
“It was a challenge for them to provide enough help to all the people who were interested,” says Moore. “Sometimes it would be a lot of work on them.”
By the end of the month, though, they had their videos.
“Some people coded, some people did presentations, some people made skits. There were all different things, so it was really hard to pick a winner,” says Shrey.
In the end, a clear winner did emerge. It was a heartfelt skit, made by students in grades five and six, about a young girl who made a YouTube video and began receiving negative comments on it. In a creative twist, it also showed the person who posted the comments and how they thought their words were harmless jokes.
“It really showed a different angle—like how it feels to be the person being bullied and how it feels to be the bully,” says Divij.
Their campaign was a success, says Moore. It got more people talking about the issue, and shared solutions for both the victims and those around them.
But for Divij and Shrey, the battle against cyberbullying isn’t over.
“We strongly believe we’ ll do more ,” says Sh rey .“This school year we’re going to do something, and even in high school we’re probably going to keep going with our campaign.”
“And even after high school—in life,” adds Divij.
Divij and Shrey are not alone in their fight. TEL US, Canada’ s fastest growing telecommunications company, is also taking action to help put an end to online bullying.
Join them and take the TELUS Wise Digital Pledge. For every pledge taken, TELUS will donate $1 to support #EndBullying programs across Canada.