By Dan Hermanutz

annual day of awareness

Pink Shirt Day encourages everyone to “Lift Each Other Up” from bullying

Feb 26, 2020 | 3:21 PM

February 26 is Pink Shirt Day, a nation-wide event to bring awareness to bullying.

Statistics show one in five kids will be affected by bullying whether that is physical, verbal or cyberbullying.

Gateway Christian School had their students wear pink shirts Wednesday to show that they stand up against bullies.

“I think the biggest thing that it does is it raises awareness, it alerts the kids to the issue that’s going on in our schools and helps make them feel more accountable and shows them how they can help those kids being bullied on a daily basis,” said Chris Rand, a grade six teacher at the school. “It can be large or small, it’s not just on the playground, we have cyberbullying now and other areas. Sometimes it’s visible but other times it is not. With that dichotomy, it’s sometimes hard to always see.”

Schools aim to educate students about what bullying is and why it is not okay. Throughout the year they teach students to reach out to a trusted adult and tell them what is going on if they either see bullying or are being bullied themselves. All that education leads up to the annual Pink Shirt Day.

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The 2020 theme is “Lift Each Other Up” and encourages standing behind and ‘lifting up’ those affected by bullying.

“Our first objective is to educate the students on what bullying is. We try to make the distinction between kids fighting and getting angry with one another, and bullying,” said Rand. “Kids recognize that bullying is something that’s chronic, if we see that something like that is going on, we instruct the kids to first of all tell an adult that they trust, and then as staff and teachers we want to bring that to a close so we are going to try and take the steps needed to make sure they are not bullied I the future.”

He added that Gateway school is making an effort to monitor the students’ technology and being aware of what they are doing on them.

“A lot of people are not happy and some people are depressed because they are getting bullied at school,” said Braxton, a student in Rand’s class. “It makes me feel like I want to stand up for them but sometimes I’m too shy to. I always want to help them and I feel bad for them. Some people wear pink and I’m guessing some bullies think that pink is weird and they bully them for it, so then we all stand with them.”

Pink Shirt Day has raised over two million dollars for anti-bullying programs throughout western Canada which impacts nearly 60,000 kids every year.

For more information, visit pinkshirtday.ca.