Building young people’s #PowerForGood during UK Anti-Bullying Week

We recently participated in Anti-Bullying Week across the UK. This is an annual week-long event dedicated to reflecting and raising awareness on the issue of bullying in all its forms. This year’s theme was #PowerForGood, which focused on promoting positivity, acceptance, and empowering everyone to use their voices for good.

We worked with Anti-Bullying Alliance (@ABAonline) to host training events for staff members and young people around Twitter’s safety and reporting tools, how to run a successful Twitter campaign, and the role of alternative narratives in amplifying positive conversations to combat bullying. The training sessions were followed by a workshop where young people from across the Anti-Bullying Alliance were invited to work together in small groups to create campaigns on the theme of #PowerForGood and to promote anti-bullying content. At the end of the event, the groups pitched their ideas, the most compelling of which were supported by Twitter with an Ads for Good grant and support for the creation of new visual materials. 

Continuing on the theme of empowering people to use their voices for good, we hosted 30 young people from the National Citizen Service (@NCS) at our London offices. We began the day with a training workshop on how to harness to power of Twitter to creative positive campaigns and to leverage the internet as a catalyst for social action. Following this work and a discussion about careers in technology, we held a session where the attendees were asked to review Twitter’s rules and highlight ways they could be improved. They were also invited to discuss the online safety issues that they view as most pressing. Their feedback will be sent to Twitter’s safety team, providing us with valuable insight on what issues matter most to UK young people.

While it is always a pleasure to host events in London, we want to ensure people from across the UK can get involved. To that end, we participated in a webinar with Childnet’s Digital Leaders (@childnet) and their mentors from across the country to discuss Twitter’s approach to safety. We also answered questions on developing the right skill set and strategies to gain future employment in the UK tech sector.

As the week progressed, we participated in The Diana Award’s Anti-Bullying Pro’s (@AntiBullyingPro) annual conference. With more than 300 young people from across the UK in attendance, we spoke as part of a panel alongside other industry members, a representative from the Department of Education, and two Anti-Bullying Ambassadors. The panel focused on the role of industry, civil society and government in combating bullying, both offline and online. Following the panel, we spoke with the educators in attendance about Twitter’s safety and reporting tools in order to provide best practice advice on how to engage young people in the classroom.

With another successful Anti-Bullying Week completed, we look forward to participating in 2017 as we continue to assist and amplify those who are using their #PowerForGood to combat bullying across the UK.