The only effective response to bullying is to create a community in which bullying is not needed for bullies to fill their needs. Few people choose to be bullies, but fall into the behaviour because it fills a need. Creating communities based on diversity, healthy relationships and courage.

1. Using radical welcome to build strong community.

2. What is Bullying?
 Bullying is when one person uses an imbalance of
power to hurt, humiliate or exclude another over a
period of time.

3. What is Bullying?
 Teasing is not bullying unless it is always the same
person being teased. Mutual teasing is an important
part of social interaction.

4. What is Bullying?
 Not being made a part of a group is not bullying unless
that exclusion is deliberate and wide spread.

5. What is Bullying?
 Losing a fight is not being bullied, unless the fights are
frequent and the person always loses.

6. The Costs of Bullying
 Victims of bullying feel isolated, their learning is
negatively affected and it may cause some social
problems in the future. On the other hand most
victims are able to get past the abuse and live
productive lives.

7. The Costs of Bullying
 The bullies tend to continue their antisocial behaviour
and have a much greater risk of substance abuse,
abusive relationships and criminal behaviour.

8. The Costs of Bullying
 The community is fractured by bullying. This
brokenness affects everyone’s ability to function fully.

9. Causes of Bullying
 Many people still think that bullying is just a part of
childhood.

10. Causes of Bullying
 Bullies and victims both have lower social skills and
function differently in groups than their peers.

11. Causes of Bullying
 Bullies use their tactics to achieve a short term goal.
They are often incapable of conceptualizing long term
consequences.

12. Causes of Bullying
 Bullies learn their tactics from inconsistent and/or
abusive parenting. They may also become bullies to
stop being victims.

13. Responses to Bullying
 Many anti-bullying programs simply shift the focus of
bullying from the victim to the bully. Any response
which shames the bully or punishes the bully will be
seen by the bully as unjust. It will cement the
behaviour rather than eliminate it.

14. Responses to Bullying
 Removing the victim from the situation may be
penalizing the victim for being bullied. Removing the
bully will mean that they don’t learn appropriate skills
for social interaction.

15. A Community Solution
 The issue of bullying is a community issue. The
solution is a community solution.

16. A Community Solution
 If we are living radical welcome, we must welcome the
bully and the victim into a new way of relating, not just
with each other, but with the community as a whole.

17. A Community Solution
 When a community is integrated and healthy,
everyone learns successful ways of fulfilling needs.
When they have a problem fulfilling needs, the
community responds to help.

18. Three parts of Welcome
Diversity
 When we make a conscious effort to name and
welcome diversity, difference becomes strength.
Imagine playing a hockey game with only goalies on
your team. We need all kinds of people, the more
kinds we have the richer we are as a community. Very
often we subtly suggest that difference is weakness. It
is in how the staff at camp manage campers who don’t
quite fit in. If they are always pushing them to be like
the others, they are not modeling welcoming diversity.
It is important to train staff to see many ways of
participating.

19. Three parts of Welcome
Diversity

20. Three parts of Welcome
Relationship
 In community relationship is at the core. At camp we
want to teach healthy relationships with each other
and creation. The first lesson is how the staff relate to
each other. The second is how the staff relate to the
campers. This is where it is important to keep an eye
on teasing. While teasing is an important tool for
building relationships, it can’t be allowed to be one
sided or focused on one individual. Having staff who
don’t mind being teased and model healthy exchange
is vitally important. The value of names is huge here.
When the staff know their camper’s names, the
campers feel part of the team.

21. Three parts of Welcome
Relationship

22. Three parts of Welcome
Courage
 Courage sounds like a difficult thing to teach, but once
people know that courage is a response to fear, not the
absence of it, it becomes easier. The truth is that
taking action in a community requires courage.
Suggesting another way of doing things, taking the
side of a victim, becoming a friend to a bully all take
courage. It also takes courage for a community to
acknowledge that bullying is not ‘their’ problem, but
‘our’ problem. Naming things gives us power over
them, and naming bullying as a problem in the
community will empower solutions.

23. Three parts of Welcome
Courage

24. Bullies and the Bible
 There are lots of examples of bullies in scripture. King
Saul was a bully as were many of the Kings that
followed, some of the interaction of the disciples
suggests that they had bullies among them. The
important thing to note is that violent response to
bullying is not what the Bible teaches. What we see
again and again through the stories is that the
response to bullying was the restoration of
relationship. Jesus didn’t throw the disciples out, he
kept teaching them and showing them the radical
welcome of the Dominion of God.

25. Bullies and the Bible

26. How do we respond?
 Bullying is going to happen. Campers come with their
learned behaviours. That means that some will want to
fall into bullying behaviour and some will bring their
issues that may lead to them being targets. Even if
there are no easy targets, the bullying behaviour may
still happen. If we respond by coming down on the
bully and blaming/shaming them then they don’t
learn about relationship. This is where the idea of
restorative justice is helpful. How do we restore
relationships that have been broken? It is a very
different question than whose fault it is.

27. Making it work
 The key to creating non-bullying community is the
leadership. Not leadership in terms of telling the
children how to behave or not behave, but leadership
in terms of how the people in charge treat each other.

28. Making it work
 A vital healthy leadership team will model strong
community and the children will follow.

29. Making it work
 Find and encourage the natural leaders in the
children’s own social groupings. Everyone wants to be
‘cool’. If the cool kids refuse to bully, most of the others
will.

30. Questions
For more information see http://bit.ly/nonbullying