The Diana Award

Everyday I'm excited, inspired by results of work I help lead but yearn for more scale, growth and insight into how to do this. I believe prize will give me new burst of focus, and energy to achieve this. 

With the money I will be able to concentrate on this for at least year full time, no distractions, amazing! Allowing someone to step into my shoes. Currently as founder of programme, Deputy CEO at my medium size organisation I wear many hats, so prize fund would alleviate pressure here, without it not sure I could step away temporarily for long as would leave a bit of gap in resource/leadership.

With mentorship I can benefit from others' experience/leadership, this excites me to have this challenge.

I believe my own story of experiencing bullying and my understanding of social media could help me benefit from this experience. I will embrace both aspects and enjoy press/publicity side.

Bullying is one issue world has faced forever and difficult, I think I have a solution, I just need help sharing it with world! I can convince world bullying does not have to exist, we can do something about it, with your help at Elevate Prize.

At school aged 9-10 I experienced racism. My Dad is Black from Jamaica, my Mum's side from Spain. Some students in my class & school didn't understand this or fact I am mixed race/dual heritage. This made me feel shy, isolated & depressed, affecting severely my mental health. At secondary school this continued but became homophobic bullying about my perceived sexuality, at  time I was not out as Gay.

From pain of this experience came my passion & purpose. My school community didn't know how to protect themselves or others, & my peers didn't feel empowered to stand up for me.

That's why I came up with the Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme, peers who stand up for others instead of standing by. So far nearly 40,000 young people have been trained in just under 5,000 schools in UK, Ireland but also spread to some schools in Miami, Europe, Dubai.

I would feel my mission was somewhat completed if I could offer every educator & young person passionate about bullying the tools to keep themselves & their school safe & bullying free. I don't want to sit on this proven programme, I want to offer it free to every school.

Bullying is alive across world, in our children's bedrooms, playgrounds, schools, as a result of being untreated it creeps into society's workplaces.

According to Unicef, half of world's teens experience peer violence in and around school. That's 150 million teens experiencing bullying.

The Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London found effects of bullying still visible nearly four decades later. The impact of bullying is persistent and pervasive, with health, social, economic consequences lasting well into adulthood.

Our own research showed in UK over half of Great British Adults have experienced bullying at school and 30% experience it workplace. This project could be far reaching and have long lasting social impact.

We train young people to drive change in their schools, giving them the skills to stand up, protect themselves and their peers and lead on preventative work. By training young people to be Ambassadors we reduce bullying and prevent poor mental health and wellbeing, equipping young people with the skills to stand up to all harmful behaviour and bullying as well as in school, online too. This has potential to shield children from bullying, an experience that stays with you.

While bulling is sadly not going away, neither are we.

One of the unique aspects is it is peer led, led by young people, many projects are about young people but don't involve young people in the project. Young people communicate in their own language and tone, absent of the authoritarian tone which teachers and educators may exude, a tone which often prevents young people speaking out. This combined with the fact that bullying issues often originate from peer groups means young people are be well placed to help other young people solve their problems. 

What makes this work is that it is their energy, ideas and their willingness that reduces the bullying. We've seen this in the 45,000 ambassadors we have trained. We're missing a trick not teaching youth about how to make the world a safer, kinder place and enabling them to prevent bullying in their working lives either as victims of it or perpetrators. Via our programme they learn about bullying, mental health, wellbeing and kindness- things the world needs more of!

We have managed to galvanise a huge force of educators and young people to shape attitudes and change behaviours as trained anti-bullying ambassadors, we now want scale up this approach to address this urgent issue.

So far we have trained nearly 45,000 young people as Ambassadors in just under 5,000 schools.

Before COVID-19 we were visiting schools in person, now we're delivering our training online, via video platforms. While in person our approach was to bring up to 200 young people from local area schools to a venue, we're now via tech able to reach more people, without the barrier or burden on schools and ourselves of travel time/expense, venue hire, and logistics. We're now actively looking into role tech can play further to cascade our work.

In schools where the programme is implemented we usually expect a reduction after 1 year of up to 30% of incidents, with students feeling safer and happier. We have had the programmed independently evaluated here: https://diana-award.org.uk/new... In the UK it is referenced in hundreds of independent school inspection reports under behaviour and wellbeing, identified as being excellent practice which leads to better outcomes for schools with government backing/funding.

We're excited at prospect of this being open source and open to all, many teacher/adult facing programmes are hidden away behind pay wall and not accessible outside of a handful of mostly European countries. Also most aimed at adults.