Beatbullying

Beatbullying is a multi-award winning UK charity that aims to empower young people to lead anti-bullying campaigns in their schools and local communities, and to build the capacity of local communities to sustain the work. Beatbullying devises bullying prevention strategies for young people by young people, focusing on ‘peer to peer’ education and empowering young people to take action against incidents of bullying and help others combat the problem, both online and off.

In schools where Beatbullying has worked, their internal evaluation suggests that incidents of bullying have been reduced by an average of 39%.

History
Beatbullying was established in 1999 by its current CEO Emma-Jane Cross and became a registered charity in 2002. In 2009 it launched the Cybermentors website, an online peer mentoring service for 11-18 year olds delivered via a social networking site. Beatbullying has worked directly and indirectly with 700,000+ young people over the last 5 years across the UK.

Activities
Beatbullying uses a range of techniques to deliver its bullying prevention model and engage with young people. As well as the core BB Mentoring that takes place in schools, the charity provides an online social networking and mentoring service through the cybermentors.org.uk website where young people mentor other young people about bullying and issues surrounding bullying and have access to trained counsellors online. Beatbullying also runs other programmes including BBSports and BBMusic, and has run specific programmes dealing with issues such as Interfaith bullying through BBInterfaith and sexual bullying through Streetwise.

Current Campaigns and Policy Work
Beatbullying campaigns to shape attitudes and change behavior both on and offline around the issue of bullying. It runs regular media campaigns including its current “click bullying into touch” campaign in conjunction with the British tabloid newspaper The News of the World.

Beatbullying also works with government and industry groups via taskforces such as UKCCIS to advise on issues around bullying and to encourage changes in industry practice.

Awards
2009
 * Best use of Digital Media - Third Sector Excellence Awards


 * Charity Principal of the Year - Charity Times

2006
 * Charity of the Year – UK Charity Awards


 * Best use of New Media – UK Charity Awards

2005
 * Charity of the Year – UK Charity Awards


 * Children' s Charity of the Year – UK Charity Awards