Local anti-bullying project gets more funding

May 8th, 2015

A local youth-oriented bullying prevention programme has received funding to expand on the project and to work with a younger, intermediate-school aged group.

"Equaliser - The Bullying Prevention Project" is funded by the Ministry of Social Development under the Te Punanga Haumaru Fund. The project manager is Paul Johnson, a Community Youth Worker at SVS - Living Safe based in Courtney Street Motueka.

Last year the project team recorded a CD's worth of music created by young people from across the top of the south, exploring the themes of bullying prevention.

In total around 100 young people from across the Nelson Tasman region took part in the project. This included 18 community music workshops in the Motueka, Richmond and Nelson communities, along with professional recording sessions held at the NMIT creative industries studios and WildBeet Production Studio in Golden Bay.

25 emotionally inspired songs have been completed and have made it onto the album. The album itself covers a wide variety of musical genres, all tied together by a common theme that bullying is real, has real life implications and needs to be stopped.

Paul says the quality of music produced is "quite outstanding and we're anticipating that it will generate widespread national appeal". 500 copies are included in the initial print run, and these will be made available and free of charge to anyone requesting a copy.

The album can also be »

Also, "Equaliser - The Bullying Prevention Project" has a Facebook page: .

In Motueka a series of performance-based workshops will be rolled out shortly within local primary/intermediate schools, exploring the themes of bullying and looking at solutions and strengths based approach to the issue.

The local team is working in partnership with Motueka's Imagine Theatre, which is a volunteer community led theatre group. They are offering free workshops within schools to help students and staff understand the issues of bullying and to work on solutions.

"We are planning to deliver these workshops during term one and two of 2015," Paul says. "This will give schools a great opportunity to set a good culture around dealing with bullying early in the year."

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