Prevent Bullying and Abuse (PREVENT) is a big project implemented for 32 months by a consortium of 7 partner organizations from 6 different countries (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Portugal and Denmark) and an associated partner. Bullying is a very common, serious and growing problem throughout the world and Europe. The main objective of the project is to develop educators' competencies in their everyday work for preventing young adults of different kind of bullying, from mockery to abuse. A comprehensive tool system will be developed in the project for that which includes - a simulation board game mostly for young adults (O1); - a Guidelines on how to work with young adults' experiences gained from the simulation game (O2); - a Forum theatre methodology also working with their experiences gained from the game (O3); - and a Glossary with research results to support educators with the needed theoretical background (O4). Playing the board game will sensitize and inform young adults about the different kind of bullying, and give them all the necessary knowledge and practices to recognize, avoid and/or handle abuse in the best possible way. This non-formal teaching method of simulation game and Forum theatre method can be more interesting for the youth, exciting and suitable for them than the typical methods of formal education. The project results also support developing the competences of the second chance school teachers (through partner organization E2C73, Copenhagen City Youth School and Second Chance School of Matosinhos, and also through all the 40 member organizations of associated partner E2C-Europe), adult educators represented by FSZK, higher education (through partner organization Universitatea Babes Bolyai), furthermore primary and high school teachers represented by Association of Hungalian Head Teachers (OFOE). Another important objective of the project is to promote and support the social inclusion of such vulnerable groups who already have fewer opportunities.. The simulation game supports to emphasize our common responsibility to avoid bullying situations and also solve these problems. It is also an objective of our project to give all the necessary knowledge and practices to young adults (including young adults from different types of vulnerable groups) to recognize, avoid and/or handle such situations in the best possible way. In this way the game supports to promote the empowerment of young adults, with special regard to young adults with fewer opportunities. There are many EU-funded projects that have been implemented in the past in the topic of abuse. In this line all of them focused only 1 or maximum 2 vulnerable groups or types of harassment. However, our project is very complex and diversified in its topics: each of the partner organizations will develop different vulnerable characters to our simulation game from 7 different vulnerable groups (people living with disabilities, women, migrants, people living in especially had circumstances, second chance school students, average people and cyber bullying). The developed situations will cover five types of maltreatment from simple vexation to real abusing situations in the case of all victimised groups. There will be 20 Multiplier Events in the project, including 19 test games and the final conference. During the 19 test games in total 190 young adults (including 100 of them with fewer opportunities) will test the tool system in their different development phases. In the final conference further 50 Hungarian people can learn about the project results and test the simulation game. There will be 7 Transnational Project Meetings and many Skype conferences that the consortium will use for the development of the toolkit. All the project results will be published and available for anyone on the project website. In this way the results of the project can be used free by educators, parents etc. Through partner organization OFOE we can reach a large number of schools and help to adapt it to their needs too while the partner organization Universitatea Babes Bolyai can reach higher education. Through associated partner E2C-Europe the project results can be shared to all the 40 member organizations of the network. We develop the simulation game for the experts, teachers and the public for use it not only during the implementation period of the project, but also afterwards for many years. The aim of our project is to contribute decrease abuse in society, but as far as there are abuses happen in everyday life, abuse will remain an actual hot topic which means that our simulation game will remain relevant and useful also for a while.
The Prevent Bullying and Abuse project was implemented by seven organisations in six countries (Hungary, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Portugal, Romania) between 1 September 2018 and 30 April 2021. In the past, all of them had experienced that young adults or school-age children from vulnerable groups were often exposed to violence or abuse in their environment. This problem has also been recognised at national level in the participating countries. Organisations from different fields have joined forces to tackle youth violence:The National Institute for Disability and Social Policy (HU), which works on behalf of people with disabilities; the Youth School in Copenhagen (DK), which also runs five second chance schools; second chance schools from Chambéry (FR) and Matosinhos (PT), the Association of Form Masters in Hungary (HU), the Sociology Department of Babes-Bólya University in Cluj-Napoca (RO) and the Teatre Tsvete in Sofia (BG). The project partners in the consortium sought and found innovative ways to raise awareness of the problem among young adults and their peers involved in or at risk of abuse. The solution was to develop a simulation game in which different young adult characters from vulnerable groups appear and participants have to put themselves in their shoes. They have to step into their shoes and deal with different abuse situations: verbal and emotional abuse, as well as financial, physical and sexual abuse. A key element of the project was to imagine and create characters that the consortium members could meet in their immediate environment, and to make the different incidents they encounter real life. The National Institute for Disability and Social Policy (HU), which works on behalf of people with disabilities; the Youth School in Copenhagen (DK), which also runs five second chance schools; second chance schools from Chambéry (FR) and Matosinhos (PT), the Association of Form Masters in Hungary (HU), the Sociology Department of Babes-Bólya University in Cluj-Napoca (RO) and the Teatre Tsvete in Sofia (BG). The project partners in the consortium sought and found innovative ways to raise awareness of the problem among young adults and their peers involved in or at risk of abuse. The solution was to develop a simulation game in which different young adult characters from vulnerable groups appear and participants have to put themselves in their shoes. They have to step into their shoes and deal with different abuse situations: verbal and emotional abuse, as well as financial, physical and sexual abuse. A key element of the project was to create and 'invent' characters that the consortium members could meet in their immediate environment, and to make the different incidents they encounter real life. In addition, these should be real-life situations, both in the project countries and in Europe in general. Another critical point of the project was how to process this with the participants of the game in such a way that they do not experience the participation as a lesson or an overly didactic game, but as an event that is enjoyable for them, and at the same time the experiences they have had make them more aware and empathetic in recognising, dealing with or, if possible, avoiding situations of abuse. The development of the simulation game was a long process, during which each partner independently tested both the characters and the method of processing during the three phases of development, so that the final product was continuously shaped by the experience of testing. The final product is a toolkit that could be played as a board game, or using only forum theatre techniques, or a combination of the two. Elements of the toolkit: Guidelines, which explain the essence of the game and make recommendations for possible applications, A guide to using forum theatre techniques, Suggestions for a game board, 17 different character space cards 5 - 5 situation cards for each character Game master booklet. The toolkit is freely available in seven languages English, in addition to the languages of the participating countries, and can be downloaded from the project website (linket beszúrni) and the EPALE website (linket beszúrni). The project participants in their national language on their own web sites will make the toolkit available. The toolkit will contribute to the development of competences of educators working with young adults and young people of school age. It will help them to educate and sensitise their students on bullying and violence without using didactic methods. It helps them to recognise when such situations occur among their students and supports them in dealing with both the victim and the perpetrator. The results of the project will be further exploited by several partners, including in university courses, disseminated to students and teachers through the project partres’ national and European networks, and developed into a teacher training programme.