Completed petition Ensure that every school in Wales has Wellbeing Ambassadors
We call on the National Assembly for Wales to ensure that every school in Wales introduces trained Wellbeing Ambassadors, so that every child has an opportunity to receive peer support from role model students who have been trained to be a buddy to pupils who are vulnerable at break and lunchtimes, who will report issues of bullying and just be there as a friend to pupils who maybe feel lonely at specific times throughout the day. We hope the Well being Ambassadors' Roles will develop/evolve to run initiatives in schools, within county and nationally, to ensure that a clear message of zero tolerance to bullying is campaigned and that the well being of all pupils is placed at the highest of importance at each school, to further support the rights of the child. We hope that this initiative will go to further support reducing the amount of bullying witnessed in school across Wales, to ensure every child feels safe and happy at schools throughout Wales.
More details
In 2016, we were chosen to represent Wales as part of the ENABLE project, a UK initiative to pilot lessons on anti-bullying. Part of the initiative involved training pupils to peer support others. However, we decided to take this a step further by training pupils to become anti-bullying ambassadors. After much discussion with our Senedd Ysgol, we evolved the ambassador scheme, changing its name to wellbeing ambassadors. We wanted to move away from using the word bullying too often as we felt pupils didn't understand the difference between conflict and bullying. We also wanted pupils to know that at the forefront, wellbeing is our priority. Pupils who are part of the scheme surf areas around the school, spotting pupils who are alone or if they see bullying happening they report to the closest adult that they find, from Headteacher to dinner supervisors.
We meet once a month as a group and every year we evolve the scheme further. Currently we are looking at buddy benches so pupils who do feel alone can take a seat and a wellbeing ambassador will be there to support them. Many of our ambassadors also sit on the Junior Safeguarding Board as a result.
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