Bullying has been a common phenomenon on campus. When a child faces a bullying event, the adults may worry that if they point up the situation, it may create negative impact on the child or exacerbate the hurt the child already got, so they may first downplay the incident or give the child evasive advice. However, with this response, the child is not able to be empathized, accepted or protected, which may worsen the situation and affect the child’s physical or mental well-being. Telling the child “Just ignore them” is as if saying “I don’t think your hurt is important.” It is like an invisible fist punching heavily on the heart of the bullied child

When bullying takes place, nobody is an outsider. Be it the helpless child or the adults who do not know what to do, as long as there is “one person” who is willing to change and step up, there is a chance to reverse the adversity. With the Anti-Bullying Education Promotion Program, Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) hopes everyone can be that “one person.”

In 2004, CWLF translated “bullying” into Mandarin and introduced the term to Taiwan. CWLF became the first non-governmental organization in Taiwan to study school bullying and conduct a series of surveys and researches on the issue. In 2010, CWLF was invited to participate in the drafting of Regulations Governing Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses[1]. The regulation was promulgated in 2012 and has become the guideline for handling bullying events for all levels of schools.

With the increasing public attention, CWLF continued developing its Anti-Bullying Education Promotion Program and collaborating with private sector to launch various advocacy initiatives. During the advocacy process, CWLF also collected feedbacks from the school system and developed training courses and class counselling services based on cultivating “trauma-informed care” and “social-emotional skills.” With the aim to create behavioural change and improve interpersonal relationships among students, CWLF designed various activities about emotions, respect and empathy for students, teachers and parents to help them understand the seriousness of bullying issues and learn ways to respond and handle the situations.

The objectives of the program are as the following:

1. To continue conducting surveys and researches to monitor school bullying situations in Taiwan and other countries.
2. To monitor the law enforcement and call for amendment to address the obstacles of enforcement.
3. To teach children ways to regulate emotions, face bullying incidents and uphold bystander justice.
4. To promote trauma-informed schools. Provide trauma-informed trainings for school personnel to help them create a school environment where children can physically and mentally feel safe in.
5. To teach teachers and parents strategies to respond to bullying incidents. To enhance their teaching and parenting skills.
6. To promote anti-bullying related ideas and enable the public to have correct understandings about bullying and build positive atmosphere in the society.

CWLF Anti-Bullying Education Promotion Program implemented the following measures to promote anti-bullying education:

• Social Advocacy

1. Conducting annual surveys on school bullying in Taiwan
2. Importing anti-bullying materials (film, picture books)
3. Operating anti-bullying website, Facebook page, anti-bullying LINE@ helpline
4. Collaborating with enterprises to organize innovative campaigns “I Have My Right against Bullying”

• Law Enactment

1. Participating in drafting Regulations Governing Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses which was promulgated in 2012
2. Participating in the amendment of the regulation for it to include measures pertaining to cyberbullying and confidentiality of the whistle-blowers in 2020
3. Serving as the member of School Bullying Prevention and Handling Committee to assist in the prevention, investigation, confirmation and counselling of school bullying incidents

• Friendly School Environment Services

1. Providing training courses for students, teachers and parents in utilizing effective strategies to respond to bullying situations, and guide the bullies, victims and bystanders to adjust their response to bullying incidents
2. Providing class counselling to let the students see the incidents from the perspectives of the bullies, the victims and bystanders with the emphasis on importance of empathy, stress management and positive attitudes

• Publication

1. Creating various educational materials such as books, teacher’s manual, board games in hopes of providing the public a direction and reference to cope and handle bullying

Project Achievement

• Raise Public Awareness

Since the research on Taiwan school bullying began in 2004, CWLF has published 18 bullying related surveys and has proposed various concrete suggestions to the public. CWLF has led Taiwanese people from being unfamiliar to fully aware of the concept of bullying, and the concept is widely used in interpersonal conflicts nowadays. In 2005 CWLF survey, only less than 40% victims of bullying were willing to seek help from their teachers. In 2018, more than 50% victims were willing to ask their teachers for help. Anti-bullying awareness has been raised.

• Call for Policy Changes

CWLF’s evidence-based anti-bullying program and experiences in practices have earned itself a significant role in anti-bullying policy making process. CWLF serves as a consulting role to provide feedbacks and request government’s timely response and adjustment on its anti-bullying measures and policies.

• Enhance Bullying Literacy on Campus

Since 2015, CWLF has cooperated with the Ministry of Education to provide training courses all around Taiwan. Until 2020, CWLF has conducted 598 courses to students, teachers and parents with 68,538 participants. Each year there were more than ten thousand people benefiting from the services and their feedbacks were 99% positive, indicating that the courses have helped them increase understandings on school bullying and know how to respond to bullying incidents.

• Improve Interpersonal Interaction in Class

Class counselling services also showed remarkable achievement. It was discovered that each student gained an average of 1.16 friends after the counselling. The interpersonal interaction has increased for Class A, B and C, and the network groups that were not interacting with each other before began to connect (Figure 1).

For instance, in Class B, the student that did not interact with anybody in the class began to connect with two different groups. In Class C, the two network groups that did not have any interaction with each other also began to connect. The group dynamics of the class started to shift.

Figure 1: Social Network Analysis Before and After Class Counselling (UCINET6)

Future Outlook

The Taiwanese government’s current enforcement of Regulations Governing Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses focuses on the investigation and overlook the importance of counselling and restoring the relationship. As a non-governmental organization, instead of focusing on the case investigation, CWLF established an anti-bullying LINE helpline to support children to process their emotions. In the future, CWLF will endeavour to push for amendment to include trauma-informed concept in the law so that when schools handle bullying incidents, mutual understanding can be prioritized, followed by strategies for restorative justice. This way the outcome of counselling in school bullying incidents can be reinforced.

Bullying is a common phenomenon on campus and it will not disappear. The influence it has on children is tremendous. It is our hope that through sharing CWLF’s experiences, it can help fellow practitioners have more reflection and imagination on their anti-bullying programs and create a friendly school environment with respect and justice.  

[1] https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?PCode=H0020081 In July, 2012, Ministry of Education promulgated Regulations Governing Prevention and Control of Bullying on Campuses.