Facebook will give over £1m to two charities, The Diana Award and Childnet International, to expand online anti-bullying programmes to reach all schools in the UK.
The Diana Award and Childnet International currently run peer support programmes and the funding from Facebook will be able to scale up the projects and reach up to 4,500 schools over the next two years.
To launch the partnership Facebook, Childnet International and The Diana Award have worked with young people to create ‘House of Us’, which is a physical representation of online bullying.
Exhibits include an audio maze that evokes feelings of being bullied, an interactive light room that responds to positive sentiment and a challenge using bullying and banter scenarios to highlight the fine line between these behaviours.
Antigone Davis, head of global safety policy at Facebook said: “This partnership is the next step in our ongoing effort to help young people build safe and supportive communities.
She added: “By offering trained digital safety ambassadors to every UK secondary school we are now taking this commitment offline too.
“Our immersive House of Us experience to launch the new partnership has been created with young people for young people. It aims to bring UK school children together to explore online safety issues in the real world in a safe, supportive environment. We look forward to getting feedback and input from young participants that can add even more peer-led ideas to the programmes in the months to come.”
Tessy Ojo, chief executive of The Diana Award, said: “Facebook’s support will enable us to upscale our work empowering 20,000 more young people to stand up to all forms of bullying and protect their peers over the next two years. Our tried and tested peer-led approach has transformed the lives of thousands of young people in schools across the UK & Ireland who spend 11,000 hours of their hours in education. “
Will Gardner, chief executive of Childnet International and Director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, said: “We launched the Childnet Digital Leaders Programme two years ago as part of our work in the UK Safer Internet Centre, with support from Facebook and the European Commission. Since then we have trained thousands of peer educators in schools across the UK using our innovative digital platform and we are constantly inspired by the amazing activities they deliver to make a really positive difference in their school communities.
“This new partnership will enable us to grow the reach and impact of the programme – offering exciting new opportunities for schools involved in the programme and empowering many more young people to become Digital Leaders and inspire their peers to use technology safely and positively.”
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