"Change in Action" bully awareness

LONGMEADOW, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - The Phoebe Prince and Carl Walker Hoover cases have made bullying a hot button topic in our area. Jackie Neiman and Susan Choquette decided to continue to raise bullying awareness through the organization "Change in Action."

The local organization was founded by two women with a goal of affecting positive social change in our community... change that brings with it a bully-free environment.

I think as parents of students the school, we knew we always wanted to do something regarding bullying in our community. In the spring, one of the principals did talk about cyber bullying, and parents started asking questions and answering questions, and there was a need to share information in our community. We thought about how to run a parent forum. We said a parent forum would be great, and how about speakers and how about turning this into a whole organization and that's how it started.

It's been a hot topic in the news the last year or two with the tragedies, the local tragedies, and I just think that you can't find a family who hasn't been effected in some way. Their children, themselves, their friends, their friends children, it's prevalent. We felt like we wanted to do something.

We've tried very hard to keep ourselves on the positive end of anything that we present. We're not necessarily anti-bullying, we're pro community. We are not legating or lobbying for any legislating change or school policy reform. There is nothing negative or argumentative at all about what we're doing. We're really trying to create our community as a place where bullying is just less likely to happen in the first place, rather than how to address it once it does happen.

Different from other anti-bullying programs that out there, we're not trying to teach conflict resolution or tell the schools how to handle discipline. We're trying to promote a very old idea of kindness, and try to put a fresh spin on it.

There are a couple of things that under lie our philosophy. The gundy quote, be the person you want to change. And the Africa philosophy that we happened upon. It loosely translates recognizing the humanity in others. You recognize that you're part of a larger whole, a larger community, and when any of the members of the community are diminished in anyway, when the whole community is brought down. That's where we're coming from, bring positive changes and bring people outside of their community and expand.

Make more connections within the community. We really feel if people know each other a little bit better, it makes it that much harder to be mean to that person.

We have actually eight teenagers from the high school in Longmeadow. Two from each grade. We knew from the start, if our mission was going to succeed, we had to have the kids involved. It had to be kid-driven. It's one thing for us to tell kids how to behave. It's another to see their peers modeling it and promoting it. We have eight teenagers and they serve on our teen advisory board for a year.

We have meetings, and they're involved in every process from the planning organization things to the events themselves, and we have them be our public face as much as possible.

Event:

Instrumental Change
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Community House in Longmeadow
2 - 6pm

• Raffles
• Music
• Sports Clinics

Who is participating in these mini clinics - Anyone who comes. We have sports teams and the idea is to get kids interacting with kids that they might not normally interact with. This is open to a 3-year-old who wants to play football or a high schooler who might want to try it and might have been too intimidated to try out for the team. It's to make connections.

For more information visit JoinTheChange.org