Training Bullying Prevention Committee

Bullying can happen anywhere and anytime and bullying is not easy to tackle.
It does not only occur at school but it can often be signaled in other circumstances.
That is why the Saba Comprehensive School partnered up with its stakeholders to start
an ‘Island wide approach’ to deal with it.

To involve the wider community, the Saba Comprehensive School asked their stakeholders
to be a part of the Bullying Prevention Coordination Committee, or in brief BPCC.

Last week the BPCC was trained. The BPCC consists of community members from
various organizations that are active in Saba’s community; Body, Mind &
Spirit, EC2, Public Health Department, Child Focus, Victim Assistance, Centre
for Youth & Family, Saba Reach Foundation and Public Entity Employment
Opportunities were represented next to members of the Saba Comprehensive
School.

The committee was trained in the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program by
certified trainer Sasha Marohn from St. Croix, where the program has been
going for five years already.
The committee will now prepare a training for all staff of the Saba
Comprehensive School, sharing their experience and training all in the best
way to treat bullying. Next to that the Olweus program offers an anonymous
questionnaire to make a comprehensive inventory of the current bullying
situation on Saba. This makes it possible to focus on the local specifics.

Body, Mind & Spirit’s programs coordinator Johan Schaeffer, who took part in
the training, says: “I believe the program can really provide a framework to
make it easy to tackle bullying issues on Saba. With the community-wide
committee other organizations can also provide support and this way we can
create a culture of tolerance and acceptance for all children.”