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According to various estimates, up to 63% of school students in the Republic of Kazakhstan are subjected to some form of bullying (research by the Ministry of Health, UNICEF, Kazakhstani NGOs).

The experience of counseling at the Just Support Resource Center shows that bullying often becomes one of the most significant triggers for suicide attempts among adolescents.
In many countries of the world, anti-bullying programs have been introduced in educational organizations; this work has been carried out for the past 40 years. Our country is at the beginning of this path. So, in May 2022, the concept of bullying was included in a number of laws (the Law on the Rights of the Child, the Law on Education, etc.), the Committee for the Protection of Children's Rights of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan in December 2022 developed and approved the "Rules for the prevention of bullying (bullying) of the child" for educational organizations.
At the same time, in the field, among teachers and the parent community, there is not enough knowledge and skills for full-fledged prevention and work with the topic of bullying. They receive regulatory documents prescribing to work with this topic, but almost do not have the necessary competencies and tools for this. We made this conclusion as a result of a year of work and consideration of 80 cases from different regions.

At the level of educational organizations: in most educational institutions in Kazakhstan, bullying is considered the norm and/or hushed up. Teachers believe that this is a stage of socialization (children grow up like this) or they do not know how to work with prevention and a detected case (they do not know theory and practice). Also, schools usually do not want to “wash dirty linen in public”, they prefer to leave the issue within the school at any cost.
At the family level: parents have low legal and psychological literacy, do not know what to do in situations of bullying and how to identify them.
At the level of children: children do not report cases of bullying until it reaches extreme degrees of manifestation. Because of the fear that this is “squealing”, that it will be worse, that their parents will punish them, that their parents already have so many problems, etc.
At the project level: the project needs funding sources to continue its work.

Bullying is the most common form of violence that occurs between children and teenagers during their school years. Through the many forms in which this phenomenon manifests itself, it threatens the right of children to education and affects the life path of all children involved, regardless of the role they play. Although the study of this phenomenon began more than 40 years ago (Olweus, 1973, 1978), adults who are involved in the upbringing and care of children and adolescents (teachers, parents) still have serious gaps and difficulties in correctly defining bullying behavior and intervening in an appropriate way. to prevent it. Any process of intervention begins with the correct definition of the situation in which we want to intervene. Thus, in order to know what to do, we first need to know what we are facing. The correct definition of the situation is a necessary condition for successful intervention.

Bullying is a complex phenomenon that takes many forms, and the literature offers several points of view on its understanding. Bullying refers to such actions by which a person or a group of people deliberately and repeatedly intimidate, injure, offend, humiliate another person, subject to an imbalance of power between the person / group of people and the victim. The definition given by Olvaeus was used by all scientists who later began to study this phenomenon. This definition shows three criteria by which we can determine whether a behavior is bullying or not: repetitiveness, intentionality, power imbalance.

To better understand the behavior of bullying, we offer you the opportunity to analyze the situation in terms of three criteria:
1. Repeatability criteria
Bullying behavior does not happen once, it repeats.

2. Criterion of intentionality
It is behavior that is done with the intent to hurt, and not by chance or as a result of experiencing the emotion of anger (for example, aggressive behavior resulting from experiencing an emotion such as anger or frustration). That is why in the specialized literature bullying is defined as a form of instrumental aggression, that is, aggression that is used to gain something: status, power, prestige, popularity, respect, etc.

3. Strength criterion
Some children and teenagers think that they have certain things that make them look better than others, more privileged, important, powerful. Power simply means the ability to cause another person to change or react in the desired direction. Simply put, power means the ability to get another person to do what you want. All people learn to use their power in a healthy way so as not to harm themselves or others. Strength is like a double-edged sword. We need to learn how to use it so as not to harm ourselves and others. Children learn to use power from the examples of the adults around them.

1. Parents of schoolchildren: 35-45 years old, mostly women who have encountered a problem or want to avoid it in the future (the child goes to school / moves to a new school).
2. Potential donors - if you personally cannot get involved in the work against bullying, you can participate by making regular donations to organizations officially working with the problem.
3. Educators in schools who are committed to a healthy classroom environment and want to know more about ways to identify and counter bullying.
4. State organizations.
5. Media.
6. General public.

We want an anti-bullying symbol to appear. A symbol not of extreme danger, but of hope and protection. This symbol can be used to identify people who have the skills to solve problems associated with bullying or people who express their position in relation to the fact that this phenomenon is destructive to society. It will also mark activities (online and offline) aimed at preventing bullying and solving related problems. When faced with this symbol, we want our children to understand that they are protected and can always turn to other people, foundations, organizations, information materials, training courses, and so on.

As far as we are aware, there is no global symbol for countering bullying. Let's create it, at least for the Central Asian region.

A courageous and honest leader who is not afraid to change the traditional behavior of "see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing to anyone."

There is an "anti-bullying community" from the Just Support Foundation (Kazakhstan), which works to counter bullying in today's society.

Community Vision: We are committed to contributing to a bully-free society. Where situations of bullying and demand are identified and resolved, the solution finds support in all places. Where the mentality and adults and children - do not encourage exceptions and development of bullying situations, if they arise, find a unique and high-quality solution. To do this, we use various forms, means and tools: we develop
information and methodological materials, seminars, trainings, lectures, master-
minds, session news, festivals and other events are distributed both offline and
and online formats, develop new digital tools and platforms, initiate discussions and public discussions, work with the identification of identified bullying, providing information and expert support. We collect the maximum number of potential partners and stakeholders for this work.

Community Mission: We help people understand what bullying is, how to identify and deal with it, a significant zero tolerance for bullying, increase their volume right and
psychological competence.

Project goal: Creation and development of a community of parents, experienced employees of organizations education, and media representatives are capable owners of children under 18 from bullying.

Project objectives:
1) Help families who have applied for support cope with bullying by involving experts, other parents and conducting specific cases.
2) Create and develop a platform for communication and communication, involve stakeholders in your work: parents, teachers, media representatives, business structures and the state.

Community Partners
- Angel Children's Safety Center, which trains child safety trainers.
- KazNU named after Al-Farabi
- Network of Youth Health Centers
- NGO Family Support Center "Family Academy"
- Department of Education of Almaty
- Committee for the Protection of Children's Rights of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Community symbol
Capybara. Good-natured, harmless and memorable animal.
Selected through polls and voting among children.

World Anti-bullying Day - May 4th.