08/10/2015

Press release: Brussels, 7 October 2015: Well over 100 young people aged 9-17 years and 35 mentors from 15 different countries worldwide participated in the ENABLE Hackathon, launched in June 2015, to reflect on the causes and process of bullying and use their creative and coding skills to propose solutions.

For many children and young people today bullying can be a very challenging issue, but rarely do they get the chance to respond to that challenge by designing their own solutions that could be implemented on a broad scale. Responding to the challenge has been the objective of the ENABLE Hackathon, which invited young people, together with an adult mentor, to collaborate, reflect on how to encourage positive behaviour, and create apps or tools to support the elimination of bullying. The Hackathon closed in September and ENABLE received more than 30 anti-bullying tools and testimonials as submissions.

We are happy to announce that the 6 top teams are: Denmark (BehaviorTweaker), Germany (an App), the Netherlands (Peer Project), Costa Rica (Treelp), Egypt (S!BB) and Ukraine (Presentation).

These teams will gather, face-to-face and virtually, at Facebook London on 13 October to meet with pupils, parents, press, decision-makers, teachers and experts to demonstrate their solutions and receive recognition for their efforts. Equally importantly, the Hackathon submissions have provided a wealth of information about how young people would like to tackle bullying.

Janice Richardson, coordinator of ENABLE and member of Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board, assisted at the jury meeting: “The solutions proposed through the Hackathon highlighted 3 things that will help shape our work in the coming year. Young people are grappling with the concept of empathy, which underlines the need to improve social and emotional learning in schools, and they don’t seem to think that teachers or parents can help them find solutions when they are troubled by bullying. Lastly, they place little focus on addressing the behaviour of the bully.”

Today ENABLE is also releasing a research report that highlights the importance of all 3 lessons learned from the Hackathon and provides the foundation on which the ENABLE approach is built. Immediately following the Hackathon showcase event in London, 25 ambassadors from a half dozen countries will take part in a 2-day training session where they will learn to implement Social and Emotional Learning in schools, and implement a holistic approach that involves activities for pupils, but also for parents and teachers. The training will also tackle the delicate issue of working with bullies, since research has shown us that, in up to 60% of cases (Olweus), bullying behaviour as a child can be a predictor for deviant or violent behaviour as an adult.

ENABLE strives to contribute to the wellbeing of ALL young people, both on- and offline; it is supported by associate partners from industry and guided by an advisory board of 12 international experts.

For further information, please contact:

• Janice Richardson, ENABLE Coordinator and Senior Advisor, European Schoolnet; +32 (0)484 057513, janice.richardson@eun.org

   

• Elizabeth Milovidov, eSafety Consultant, European Schoolnet; +33 (0)665 622571, elizabeth.milovidov@eun.org

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