CREATING HOPE

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Creating Hope will feature expert panels, discussion groups and resources that to provide a tool kit of concrete action steps and lesson plans that participants can take home. An educator forum will take place from 3:30-5:30 PM and a parent/student forum will take place from 5:30-7:30PM.

Creating Hope is a response to the growing need expressed to the Bronx Borough President’s office and Project Bully Free Zone, a national organization that has served over 7,000 participants in the Bronx, about the widespread impact that bullying and cyber bullying have on the lives of our young people in school and the community. The Bronx is becoming a model for the rest of the City in the fight against bullying.

“There are major challenges that stakeholders in the Bronx education system face surrounding the problem of bullying. Through events such as this, we are taking the necessary first steps towards a holistic solution to this important issue,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

This is a response to the great demand following to the Bronx Education Summit in October 2011, Project Bully Free Zone is partnering with the Bronx Borough President’s Office to present ‘Creating Hope: The Fight Students, Parents and Teachers Can Win to Prevent Bullying’ on April 3, 2012, at the Soundview Academy for Culture and Scholarship/IS 131 at 885 Bolton Avenue, Bronx, 10473.

“Bullying and cyber bullying repeatedly undermine students’ ability to thrive academically and socially, whether they are bystanders, bullied or the bully,” says

Project Bully Free Zone’s founder, Traciana Graves, “by bringing together all community stakeholders to provide students, parents and teachers an opportunity to learn powerful ways in which they can contribute their strong voices and strengths, we establish a foundation to create safe schools, communities and places of work.”

It is time for everyone in the Bronx to come together and take a stand to let our young people know that we support them. As William Frackleton, principal of Soundview Academy, says, “It is time that schools like Soundview Academy, once again, serve as vehicles for transformation and change - especially within communities much too accustomed to the rituals of abuse and violence of early teens.”