A made-in-Prince George answer to bullying is making the rounds at local schools, youth groups, service clubs and sports organizations.
The RCMP's BRAVE Program was launched in 1997, authored primarily by local Mountie Dale Girling (now retired). It became a nationally approved RCMP program, and dozens of Mounties have been trained in its delivery over the years, many of whom have gone on to detachments all across Canada. It is also an endorsed anti-bullying program by the Vancouver Police Department and a police department in Australia.
BRAVE stands for Bully Resistance and Anti-Violence Education. It is typically delivered to Grade 5 and 6 students, but it has been presented to high school classes and younger children alike. It usually fits into eight to 10 sessions of about an hour each, but it can be tailored to a number of settings and time frames. If Prince George Community Policing Centre commander Cpl. Carissa Hornoi stresses anything about it, it's that BRAVE is portable.
"We are often asked to present BRAVE to a school or a youth group where a particular bullying incident has occurred," said Hornoi. "We can often tailor the presentations to focus on the circumstances of that incident, or we can emphasize the social networking aspect of bullying, or the Internet and texting kind of bullying we see happening now. The program has definitely evolved over the years, because those weren't happening at all when BRAVE was first designed."
Other RCMP initiatives for youth, like the drug resistance program DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) or the gang resistance presentations done in schools, have elements of bully awareness built into them as well. It is a foundation condition that leads to a lot of the social difficulties kids face as they get older, said Hornoi.
Volunteers are invited to get the training and join the team of presenters available to go to schools and other youth settings, Hornoi said. It does not have to be a uniformed police member who leads the program.
The lead instructor currently is RCMP Auxiliary Const. Davy Greenlees, who said the focus of the presentation is on the dynamics of a bullying incident. Who is the one doing the bullying, the one being bullied, and the one(s) who observe, and what are the dynamics of how they play their roles?
"I avoid the word 'victim' and use the word 'target' instead," he said. "We talk a lot about the bystander and how much power the bystander actually has. The bulk of that power is reflected to the bully, in a lot of situations where no one intervenes, but there is a flow of power away from the bully when a bystander speaks up."
BRAVE has components that are lecture-based, but a lot of games, role playing, expression and other interactive activities as well. The four basic principles fit under the BUST acronym:
- Build connections
- Use authority
- Stay safe
- Take a stand
Hornoi said the police spend a lot of time with schools, often in uncalculated ways. Sometimes Mounties will be called in to address a matter that has gone too far for school administrators to handle on their own, so the police come in to help. That often results in no criminal proceedings, she said, but still a lot of dialogue and accountability-building between the bully, the target, the bystanders and the school support system.
Any school or community group interested in the BRAVE program can call the Community Policing Centre at 250-561-3366 for more information.
