Schools taught to counter bullying with kindness
SEREMBAN: Students and teachers from 47 schools gathered at SMK Seri Pagi to learn how to deal with bullying situations during the second leg of the #StandTogether nationwide Kindness Tour.
The Kindness Tour is a series of national workshops organised by Digi as part of the #StandTogether National Kindness Week campaign.
It aims to reach 750 schools this year, and recruit 3,000 students and teachers to be “Kindness Ambassadors”.
“The nature of bullying has changed to extend beyond school environments and into cyberspace.
“And because the students are native to this new environment, they know best how to deal with it,” said Digi sustainability associate Khaled Ambru Ambok Chening, who helped lead the student workshop yesterday.
“Our role is to teach them how to be ‘upstanders’ and not bystanders. That means using empathy as a tool to identify the root causes of bullying, understanding it and addressing it.”
This message was well received by the student participants.
“The workshop taught me that standing by and not doing anything, even if you’re taking a video of a bullying incident to show a teacher later, is not helpful,” said SMK Puteri student Kuan Shu Hui, 16.
“We learnt that it’s very important for you to put yourself in someone’s shoes. If you were a victim of bullying you would wish that someone
would stand up for you, too,” Kuan added.
The workshops, which were separated into students’ and teachers’ sessions, allowed participants to share ideas and personal experiences with bullying.
The teachers’ workshop, facilitated by International Medical University (IMU) psychology lecturers,
provided teachers with a safe avenue to learn about various forms of bullying and how to counter it using kindness.
“I hope that the (#StandTogether) campaign will continue every year. This programme will unite students, inculcate good behaviour and allow us to live in harmony,” said SMJK Chan Wa school counsellor Satha Sivam Shanmugam.
The #StandTogether Kindness Tour is organised in conjunction with the #StandTogether 2019 National Kindness Week campaign initiated by R.AGE, property developer SP Setia and supported this year by Digi, Unicef Malaysia, IMU and other partners.
Students and teachers interested in signing up for the free #StandTogether Kindness Tour workshops can contact Fakhriyyah Muhardi at fakhriyyah.muhardi@moe.gov.my.
For more information about the #StandTogether campaign, visit www.standtogether.my.
To sign up for National Kindness Week, go to bit.ly/standtogether2019.