The vision of the project: Our vision is to prevent or mitigate the occurrence of violent/aggressive speech and bullying on the internet with the education and promotion of a positive mindset. We will provide our youth workers, leaders and young adults with the methods, tools, and guidance necessary to achieve our objective. The problem of starting bullying or being involved in bullying: When it comes to social media, it's no big secret that cyberbullying is prevalent, particularly among teens and young adults. It's too easy to bully and say whatever they want to each other from behind the safety of their usernames and devices. In fact, approximately 34% of the students surveyed by the Cyberbullying Research Center have experienced cyberbullying in their lifetimes. Cyber "bully/victims" were heavily involved in "traditional" forms of bullying - 64% had been bullied, and 66% had bullied others. In a study of high school students, 61% of cyber "victims" also reported being victims of "traditional" bullying; 55% of cyber "bullies" also said they had bullied others in "traditional ways." (https://bit.ly/MindOfABully ) When an individual's identity is not stable, his/her attempt at intimacy may lead to isolation and attempts at intimacy become desperate attempts showing bullying and harassment. (Berzoff, 2008, p. 112). Our solution - Applying positive psychology and fostering a positive mindset. Positive psychology is a scientific study of what makes people thrive and focuses on behaviours that can lead to a more optimized frame of mind to lead to more practical actions, much like cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). But compared to CBT, positive psychology focuses more on what makes already-functional; it focuses on strengths instead of weaknesses (Martin Sellingman, Father of modern positive psychology - https://bit.ly/PositivePsychologyDef ). Positivity improves life, working place, family and society as a whole. Target groups: - Youth Workers/Youth Leaders . Young adults (years 18+, post-adolescence as an epigenetic stage) Expected results of the project MINDSET educational program which has a mission to prevent cyberbullying before it happens by fostering a positive mindset within people. MINDSET educational program promotes positive psychology, fostering positive thinking, empathy and a positive mindset. MINDSET train-the-trainer program is going to help facilitate the training of our youth trainers according to the developed educational program, adding specific techniques, methods and tools. MINDSET guidebooks for youth workers for having permanent guidance in paper and electronic form - a step-by-step guide book for youth workers and young adults to help build and foster a positive mindset within people. We will also create and develop a website that will offer information on how to promote a positive mindset in general and how to combat cyberbullying. We plan on doing so by collecting various cyberbullying stories from our partnering countries. Participants The project will span over 24 months and consists of a partner from 9 different countries. In every country, we will help educate one-country project promoters that will facilitate the usage of all project results. Education will be held across 18 youth centres in partnering countries, and it will involve 36 youth workers for pilot project results implementation. Implementation groups of youth workers/country promoters will test the train-the-trainer and develop a program on LTT, they will learn skills needed to successfully and adequately turn people away from becoming bullies by successfully fostering a positive mindset. Impact and benefits of usage of our results on the final recipient's group: - Impacting on the development of the participant's positive mindset - Improved lifestyle and preventing of bullying online and offline - Significantly reduced possibility for recurrence of online bullying - Focusing on the positive side of life instead of dwelling on problems - Better coping with any kind of issues in future life - Happiness is a choice but also something we need to work on
By implementing this project we intended to achieve the following objectives: - To develop and foster a positive mindset in young adults. - To help young people to recover emotionally from bullying/cyberbullying by develop a coping mechanism - To help youth workers / trainers to be in line with young peoples perceptions of online / offline reality - To provide tools and materials to youth workers to be able to foster a positive mindset within young people - To raise awareness towards to cyberbullying problem, which is a global phenomenon - To prevent bullying / cyberbullying for occurring as well a violent speech online Indeed, we were able to tackle all the proposed objectives throughout the development and implementation of our project.
The main reason we applied for this project is because we shared common concerns and vision: to prevent or to mitigate the occurrence of violent/ aggressive speech and bullying online (cyberbullying), through education and the promotion of a positive mindset. Our proposal is to apply positive psychology and foster a positive mindset to prevent cyberbullying. Positivity improves life, working place, family and society as a whole. For our project, positive psychology as part of this field will: - Help cope with the effects of cyberbullying - Prevent bullying as action - Prevent online bullying We applied for this project aiming to address the identified needs of Youth Workers & Young People: - To develop a positive mindset in young adults. A positive mindset will improve life and prevent aggressive/bullying actions. The person will experience distinct health benefits, including reduced risk or symptoms of depression, better psychological and physical wellbeing - To help young people to recover emotionally from bullying/cyberbullying by develop a coping mechanism - To help youth workers to be in line with young people's perceptions of online / offline reality - To offer innovative training for youth workers in positive mindset Through our project approach, we truly believe we have successfully addressed the identified needs of our target groups, which will be developed in detail along this report.