Be the Upstander!

Lingfield and its Anti-Bullying Ambassadors are a part of The Diana Award, a youth-led programme that helps engage young people to change attitudes, behaviours and the culture of bullying by helping to give our peers confidence to address different situations. The Diana Award was founded in memory of Princess Diana and her belief that young people have the power to change the world.

The Anti-bullying programme at Lingfield College is a peer lead programme in which we, students at the school, are trained to identify and tackle bullying behaviour, while also helping those who are a target of this behaviour. Furthermore, as Anti-Bullying Ambassadors, throughout the year we have launched our TAG/RAG initiative which aims to enlighten and guide students on how to stand up for themselves in situations where they are either witness to bullying behaviour or experiencing it directly.

We believe everyone has a right to feel safe in school. We want to create a community of upstanders, rather than bystanders.

With that in mind, help and guidance is available on our firefly page, located on the dashboard. On the Lingfield Upstanders page, you will find all the information on how to contact an ambassador including our email: betheupstander@lingfieldcollege.co.uk and our Instagram page @lingfieldupstanders, which we use to spread positivity and interact with our peers on how we can tackle bullying behaviour. Also, the page includes profiles of the anti-bullying ambassadors so that students know what we look like when at school and allows students to get to know us as people not just ambassadors.

Overall, our aim as Anti-Bullying Ambassadors is to spread positivity around the school and help guide students to make Lingfield the positive place it is. Our vision for the upcoming year is to create digital displays to educate our peers on the types of bullying behaviour and ways to combat them. Also, we are going to organize movie nights where we show inspirational films that we as students can identify with and learn from, as well as much more. Our overall promise to our peers at Lingfield College is that we will continue to develop strategies and campaigns, as trained Anti-bullying Ambassadors, to empower the people of Lingfield to stand up against bullying behaviour.

Written by Niamh Fitzgerald (Anti-Bullying Ambassador at Lingfield College)