Abuse Bites--True Love Heals: Empowering Students in Pentwater Michigan to Stop Abuse & Bullying

We had a great time in Pentwater Michigan this week! The children's K-6 workshop was phenomenal! The games and interaction fun and hilarious!

Our program is fun, that's for sure! But while we have fun, we're sending a bigger message to students!

Many of these volunteers (above) are shaking maraccas. Two of them don't have anything. I asked them how they felt. They said, "Sad, and left out." So I asked the students with the instruments to demonstrate kindness and share with the ones who didn't have any. How quickly smiles poured onto these precious faces. We empower students to accept others and include them.

These students (above) demonstrated how quickly what we say can turn into gossip. Words hurt, words heal, but words can even kill. So we empower students to zip their lips unless they have something nice to say. We also educate students on what to do when bullied "ASKING FOR HELP" is way different than tattling and we explain the difference.

Cyber Bullying is huge, via text, picture, email, or facebook (fakebook)! In this demonstration (below), one of the high school students came forward and participated to show that if I took a picture of him and sent it to all his friends, they'd send it to their friends, and on and on, until the whole world had this picture he didn't want to share. We empower students to BEWARE of the information they SHARE and to REPORT any cyberbullies right away!

I'm sure you're aware of the statistics by now: 160,000 kids in the USA fear going to school every day due to bullying. In 85% of school bullying there is no intervention. And 1 teen dies every 30 minutes due to bullying and bullycide.

Bullying and bullycide are running rampant all over the USA. Sadly, today the bully often has more power than those being bullied. Abuse Bites CHANGE rally's empowers students to regain the power in their own lives to make the CHANGE that is needed to put a stop to bullying.

This Pentwater middle school student (below) faced a fear in our "FEAR FACTOR" game, to demonstrate to other students that it's hard to stand up for yourself or others and do something scary when you're all alone, but it can be done! Yay! Go Pentwater!

However, we empower students to stand together--not to be singled out and stand alone! We share our inspiring stories of how we overcame abusive and bullying situations, and use updated statistics, student demonstrations, and interactive games to drive the message home.

Statistics today tell us that there is typically 1 bully to every 7 students in the school. Below is a photo of our "TUG O WAR GAME". Our bully is on one end, six students on the other. Guess who wins?

There is power in numbers--if those other 6 simply STAND TOGETHER, they will defeat the bully every time. Too many times we're giving the bully the audience and not backing the target or victim. When we asked for volunteers, hands shot up all over the gym (below)! Eager to participate and eager to stop bullying! A great day for sure!

Pictured below is Baby Ruth, our "Bully" Dog. She is absolutely the worst dog we ever had. She chewed up everything, wouldn't potty train, and was very aggressive toward other people and pets. She even ran away from me when I was calling her and got hit by a car at a year old. However, since I worked harder with her, disciplined her, loved her, and didn't give up on her, she CHANGED and was a better dog. By sharing her story, we explain how "bullying is just a behavior" that can "change" with the right help.

Empowering Bullies to CHANGE! Her outfit reads "Paws for CHANGE".

At the end of our workshop, we encourage all students whether they were victims/targets, bystanders, or bullies before, to make a CHANGE and be different now! 98% of all students came forward to declare the CHANGE to stop bullying in their school and community! Isn't that amazing?!