Workshops to Prevent Bullying in UAE Schools

The Child Safety Department (CSD), a subsidiary of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs (SCFA), recently conducted twelve educational workshops at schools and centres in Sharjah, to educate children on the impact of bullying, and ways to prevent it.

Held in conjunction with the UAE’s second National Bullying Prevention Week, the workshops were organised by the Ministry of Education (MoE), in collaboration with the Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood in partnership with 25 local and federal entities under the theme ‘Flourish Together’.

Nahla Hamdan Al Saadi, Director of Events and Activities at CSD, led the workshops for 590 students from eight schools, and various ‘Sharjah Children’ centres in Al Khalidiya, Al Riqqa, and Mughaider. “Bullying in schools has become one of the key issues of concern worldwide, given its devastating negative impact on children, their academic performance and sometimes their decisions to drop out of school. UNESCO’s new Global Status Report on School Violence and Bullying indicates that more than one billion children around the world attend school and an estimated 246 million children and adolescents experience school violence and bullying in some form every year. It is a terrifyingly large number that compels us to further our concerted efforts to prevent and fight this issue.”

The workshops enable children to understand the concept of bullying, characteristics, behaviours of bullies, and key strategies that victims should adopt when facing bullying. Awareness was raised on the three key types of bullying: verbal (insult, cursing, name calling, teasing, harsh criticism and taunting); social bullying (threatening, rude hand gestures, social exclusion and deliberate disregard) and physical bullying (hitting, tripping, pushing, throwing or taking someone’s belongings, and inciting others to assault).