Southwest Schools Come Together to End Bullying, Promote Diversity

Students all across the southwest came together in their own unique ways on Wednesday for Pink Day, a day meant to bring up the issue of bullying and speak on the importantance of diversity and acceptance in culture and society.

Pink Day began in 2007 when a grade nine male student was bullied in Cambridge, Nova Scotia after wearing a pink shirt to school. Seniors of the boy's high school heard of the bullying and pulled friends together to rally in support of the freshman.

The next day, the halls of the school were filled with pink t-shirts, thus creating the Pink Day tradition across Canada.

Specific to Saskatchewan, the Red Cross began Pink Day in 2011 to coincide with year round bullying prevention programs.

Ponteix School was one of many schools hosting Pink Day events on Wednesday with over 130 students taking part in the youth leadership workshop. Approximately one third of 133 Ponteix School students use English as their second language.

Chad Striker is the principal of Ponteix School and he spoke to SwiftCurrentOnline following the anti bullying and racism activities.

"The whole idea of multiculturalism lends itself so well with any issue we deal with at the school level or human level-- respect, tolerance, peace and belonging. It is all kind of one, all those concepts."

Rhonda Rosenberg is the Executive Director of the Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan and led much of the activities for students in Ponteix, which included trust building exercises and creating new original cultures among small groups.

"One of the things they [students] start to do through the activities is recognize what their commonalities are with one another. As important as it is to understand differences, understanding each of us have things we can find in common is really important," said Rosenberg.

Within Swift Current, schools were busy holding events as well.

Students at Fairview School have been taking part in bullying awareness week activities since Monday, and signed a pledge Wednesday that commits to do their part to end bullying.

"We talked a little bit about the pledge, what a pledge is and what it stands for," says Fairview Principal Travis Kelln. "We all traced out our handprints and signed them, making a nice display in our front foyee that will stay up for the rest of the year that we as a collective group will bind together and stand up for bullying and hopefully that trickles out into the community as well."

Kelln says his school puts forth an effort to ensure the proper and appropriate labels are used among students when determining bullying.

"At Fairview we try to distinguish between bullying and conflict. We always say we don't want the label of a bully and sometimes in everyday life, in a football or game of tag we will have conflict, and that doesn't mean you need to go home and tell Mom and Dad you're being bullied at school because someone was mean to you. We generally want students to understand there's more to it than that- more to being being a bully than 'I was mad during the football game so I pushed you', those are isolated incidents. They can become bullying, but we try to give them an idea between the two."

Students at Ecole Centennial had a K-8 family activity where the students learned about the history of the pink shirt, what bullying is and then made a pledge to stick together against bullying and wrote the pledge on a Safeway balloon.

Irwin Ice students supported the Red Cross Day of Pink in support of Bullying Awareness on February 24th, by participating in a variety of activities that have been sponsored by Ms. Connor's Grade 6 class and our Irwin ICE LEADERSHIP TEAM.

At Central School, some of the activities included a bake sale, picture with ICY the bear, Pink face painting, T-shirt sales, and a candy jar guess. All proceeds raised will be donated to the Red Cross.

Members of the Swift Current Fire Department took off their red gear to show support for the day as well.