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Raising awareness of bullying is important

Ever since two boys, David Shepherd and Travis Price, along with some friends, decided to stand up to the bullying of a boy for wearing a pink shirt in 2007, schools across Canada have been observing Pink Shirt Day, with this year’s date on Wednesday

Ever since two boys, David Shepherd and Travis Price, along with some friends, decided to stand up to the bullying of a boy for wearing a pink shirt in 2007, schools across Canada have been observing Pink Shirt Day, with this year’s date on Wednesday, Feb. 27 in Weyburn schools.
The elementary schools in Weyburn will be attending a special Pink Shirt Day concert on Friday, March 1 at the Cugnet Centre, with singer Ryan Laird, and they will hear his story about being bullied during middle school.
Pink Shirt Day has exploded and is a world-wide phenomenon. Countries across the globe are now organizing anti-bullying fundraisers of their own, including Japan, New Zealand, China, Panama and numerous others. In fact, last year alone, people in almost 180 countries shared their support of Pink Shirt Day through social media posts and donations.
The whole reason for having this day each year is that bullying has continued unabated in many forms and by all ages. There is physical bullying, verbal bullying, social and relational bullying, and then perhaps the most insidious form of all, cyberbullying. In this latter form, people can be very mean and nasty with derogatory comments, intimidation, or simply smear someone’s reputation, and hide behind their device or keyboard as they say things they would never ever say out loud or to someone’s face.
In many ways, cyberbullying is perhaps the most cowardly and hurtful form of bullying and can do damage in ways that go deep in causing hurt and pain to a person’s emotions and well-being.
There are other resources that people can look into to deal with bullying, such as a website called bullylist.org, where those who post bullying photos and/or comments are called out and named the The Bully List, along with their Facebook friends.
If you are called out on this list, you can have your name removed only by removing your post or photo. In other words, it’s a website that is trying to make people take some responsibility for the hateful or hurtful things they put onto social media or the Internet that hurts and bullies other people.
The site has a feature where you can search your name or school or community.
One unfortunate side effect is there have been posts by people who actually want to be on the bully list and be proud of it. Most people are not like this, however, and would not want their name or the shame of what they posted trumpeted for everyone to see and read.
Putting on a pink shirt doesn’t guarantee that bullying is going to go away, but it will help raise awareness that this is an important issue to address, at school, work or in the community.