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Boys and Girls of Richmond show their true anti-bullying colours

Club members display banner and don t-shirts for Pink Shirt Day

Some of them may be too young to fully comprehend what’s going on.

But one thing’s for sure, come Pink Shirt Day this Wednesday, the 60 or so kids aged six to 12 at Richmond’s Boys and Girls Club (BGC) will know they have lots of friends and will have a good idea of how to treat them.

Every month, the local BGC, which is run out of Mitchell elementary at Cambie and No. 5 roads, has grown in number since it opened in 2011. However, the anti-bullying message on Feb. 25 remains the same, even if it sails over the heads of the popular club’s younger members.

“They know something important is going on,” said Richmond club coordinator Kirsten Hamaoki. “We talk a lot about being a good friend and helping out any new kids that come into the club. We are trying to be very pro-active when it comes to the programming.”

Pink
The official Pink Shirt Day t-shirt

Hamaoki said the kids at the club, which runs four afternoons a week from Monday to Thursday and from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., have been working on their Pink Shirt Day banner for most of last week.

The kids have been wearing their pink shirts, making arts and crafts and visiting other clubs to see the work each other is doing in the lead up to the big day.

On the day itself, they will be heading to Downtown Vancouver at 7 a.m. to meet the 350 or so members of all 12 Lower Mainland clubs and giving out Pink Shirt Day buttons to the public before heading back to school.

After school, they’ll head back downtown again for a wrap-up party with pizza, drinks and a concert to celebrate.

In Richmond, the BGC — which is the single, largest recipient of funds raised during Pink Shirt Day in B.C. — boasts kids from several cultural and social backgrounds dropping in every week for any one of its four get-togethers.

And the club is very aware of the role it has when it comes to dealing with the spectre of bullying.

 “We really do our best to promote (the club) as being a safe place; a place where we can build up their self-esteem and connect them with other children in a positive way,” said BGC Richmond’s manager, Natalie Lutz, when asked what the club does to get to the root of bullying.

In the run-up to Pink Shirt Day, the kids at the club have been creating arts and crafts, and using the art to express their growing understanding of bullying. Their art then gets passed around the other Lower Mainland clubs, said Lutz.

Carolyn Tuckwell, president and CEO of BGC’s South Coast BC region, said children being surrounded by “cool role models and mentors, getting positive feedback and creating healthy relationships” goes a long way to the club’s pro-active approach to bullying.

“This is our eighth (anti-bullying) campaign and we are seeing an increased understanding of bullying among the kids,” said Tuckwell.

“Kids now know what to do when they see bullying taking place. Ten years ago, I’m not so sure they did.

“Bullying used to be regarded as a right of passage, something that we all had to go through. But people now have a real intolerance of it, and it’s behaviour that’s now deemed unacceptable; so much so that we’re seeing legislation and corporate policies on the subject.”

Cyber bullying continues to be at the front line of the anti-bullying battle, with the common misconception that girls’ negative use of technology is more prevalent than boys.

“We are hearing that girls are more involved in this than boys, but I’m not sure if that’s true,” said Tuckwell.

“We’ve certainly no evidence of that as yet. But the bullying is different for sure; boys are more likely to use physical power, while girls will use emotional isolation and group pack behaviour.”

Meanwhile, the City of Richmond has declared Feb. 25 “ERASE Bullying Day.”  To mark the day, a limited number of ERASE Bullying pink t-shirts will be on sale for $6 each until 26 at South Arm and West Richmond Community centres.