After two weeks from launching the initiative of fighting peer to peer violence mainly focusing on bullying, the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) announced on Sunday the preliminary results; stating that the national Child Helpline has received 12,923 calls seeking help from bullying since the start of the campaign.
Azza Ashmawi, NCCM’s secretary general stated that the preliminary research indicates that Cairo is the highest governorate in number of calls with around one third of the total number, followed by Alexandria and Giza governorates.
The campaign aims to fight all sorts of peer to peer violence, including physical, emotional, and verbal. It was launched in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Technical Education (MOETE) in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and funded by the European Union (EU).
The preliminary results also show that most of the received calls were from children aged from 10-12, 70% of them are males, while only 30% are females. Ashmawi explained that it indicates that boys have higher potentials towards violence and bullying more than girls.
The social campaign was met with a huge welcome and acceptance from both families and students, according to Ashmawi, “the NCCM has received several messages and calls from students expressing their happiness with having such a campaign.”
With the hashtag #IAmAgainstBullying, the initiative asked people to share their bullying stories, with the participation of Arab superstars and the UNICEF Egypt ambassadors Ahmed Helmy and Mona Zaki.
The aim of fighting peer to peer violence through a social campaign saw the light after a dstudy conducted by the NCCM and UNICEF in 2015 on three governorates. The study showed that the highest level of violence facing children occurs at home, followed by school; with 29-47% of children aged between 13 and 17 reported that physical violence among peers was commonplace.
In its latest studies, the UNICEF reviewed the global data which indicates that slightly more than one in three students aged 13-15 around the world experience bullying. While girls and boys are equally at risk of being bullied, girls are more likely to become victims of psychological forms of bullying and boys are more at risk of physical violence and threats.
