BULLYING is something that blights the lives of thousands of young people across the county. Recently four young Colfox pupils from Bridport's Youth Page and Summentor Projects (Luna Diaz, Dan Jones, Ellie Pritchard and Claire West) attended the National Anti-Bullying Conference in Weston-Super-Mare.Claire West reports...

AN ANTI-BULLYING conference was held by Action-Work, in partnership with I-POWER-I, and in association with North Somerset Council and attracted people from California and Korea.

The two days included workshops, talks and discussions and was a great chance to meet new people, and to learn and hear about others points of view.

Young people and adults gave presentations and talks in the main hall. These included role-plays, PowerPoints, and dances.

Singers Lhamea and Witness talked, or rather, sang, about their experiences of bullying. Also, Childline founder Esther Rantzen attended. She talked about what the organisation does, and how to get in contact with advisors.

The one presentation that moved us most, and really stuck in our minds, was Screw Me Up, founded by Charly Cook, a Sixth Form student from North Leamington.

The campaign aimed to reach out to teenagers and show the impact that bullying can have on victims and their future. The presentation included everyone in the hall having a piece of paper and screwing it up.

Charly's point was: 'No matter how much you try and get the creases out of the paper, it will never be back to how it was - this is the effect that bullying can have'.

The presentation was accompanied by an appropriate song, Mad World, by Gary Jules.

Lana Diaz said: "It was very moving. So simple, yet so effective."

The workshops were a particularly good chance to really get involved and learn new ways of tackling bullying.

One workshop that stood out was with Johan Jenson, a contributor from Stonewall, an organisation that works to achieve change for homosexuals and bisexuals in the UK.

We were split into four groups, mainly with people that we had never met before, and discussed homophobia in schools, and how it can be tackled.

We all felt that our opinions were really valued and listened to by the group and Johan.

We also experienced another, very alternative, way of tackling bullying using puppets and role-play. Puppet Madness was one way of dealing with the problem in primary schools. We took away with us a lot of information about how bullying can be dealt with in schools.

We are now planning to create a solid and steady anti-bullying policy in Colfox.

We do not feel that there is enough being done to support victims or tackle the problem at the moment, and we aim to change this. The matter will be discussed in a school council meeting and hopefully action will be taken. In general we felt that this was a very positive experience to have had and we were all glad to have done it. We hope to be involved next year, and show our presentation.

Senior youth worker for West Dorset, Arthur Woodgate, said: "We're grateful to the Sir John Colfox School for agreeing to release four of our Summentor Project Mentors to attend the conference with Keith Hatch and myself.

"They've come back bulging with ideas and enthusiasm, and we hope that we will now be able to work with the school on an integrated approach to the very real issue of bullying."