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What role can schools play?

Research shows that whole school involvement in the process is essential to create a healthy and welcoming school culture and thereby address bullying effectively. A school-wide commitment to take bullying seriously and develop practices and policies that foster safe, inclusive and accepting schools is paramount. Teachers’ efforts to address bullying are supported by this kind of comprehensive approach.

There was a lot of bullying in our school. Since last year there’s a real difference. I think the teachers and our principal are helping us.
-Student, 5th grade

Success Story


We established a Safe, Strong and Free committee at our school after taking part in COPA’s ACT program. We invited everyone to participate and were a little surprised at the number of students who wanted to be a part of this project. At first we were a little worried about our decision to start the club – how would we manage such large numbers? But honestly, the students surprised us. They always suggested great, practical and simple ideas – always simpler and more effective than ours!

Here’s an idea they came up with which still works today and is very popular: If a student does something nice for another student, their name is written on the "Safe, Strong and Free" bulletin board. For students, it is a great honour to see their name written up there!

Students of the committee suggested that teachers, principals and vice-principals add things on the board. And so we do.

The SSF board is a landmark and a source of pride for everyone in the school.