1 in 5 young people in Europe were victims of cyberbullying during their childhood and/or adolescence. Due to the scale of this problem, cyberbullying has become a priority for the Council of Europe’s Children’s Rights Division.

Victims of cyberbullying are harassed with impunity and the perpetrator remains anonymous, which reduces empathy towards the victim and the risk of a direct response. The bullying can be observed and replicated by thousands of people (Robinson & Segal, 2019).

This can lead victims to mental health problems.
Some worrying statistics on cyberbullying (Statista, 2020) are as follows:

• Only 38% of victims of cyberbullying are willing to admit it to their parents.
• 34% of young people in Europe have experienced cyberbullying at least once.
• Victims of cyberbullying are 1.9 times more likely to commit suicide.
• 210 per 1,000 victims of cyberbullying are girls of a different skin colour.
• 68% of children who have been bullied online have experienced mental health problems.
• 42% of LGBT youth have experienced cyberbullying.
• 33% of teenagers have sent someone pictures or texts with explicitly pejorative content at least once.
• 66% of female victims of cyberbullying feel powerless.
• In 2020, Poland held the record for the most painful consequences of cyberbullying.

Poland faces the most severe forms of online harassment. 9 out of 10 respondents to the survey said they experienced mild or severe stress after cyberbullying. In some cases, there was even serious damage to the personal reputations of those harassed.

Some 45% of Italians aged between 13 and 23 admitted to having been victims of cyberbullying, currently the most common form of violence among young people.

In Spain, according to a recent study, 40% of young people under the age of eighteen have been victims of cyberbullying, including 46.7% of girls compared to 33.1% of boys (StCh, 2019).

The drivers of cyberbullying are not sufficiently understood and cyberbullying programmes are not gender-sensitive. The EU Guidelines on Children in the Digital Environment encourage the development of strategies to address cyberbullying with significant support for young people. However, an EU evaluation of good practice reveals that while most initiatives are well addressed, they rarely actively involve children and young people in preventing and tackling cyberbullying (EU Policy Department for Civil Rights and Constitutional Affairs, 2016). The evaluation also highlighted the need to promote initiatives that address and combat cyberbullying as such, with its unique characteristics that differ in scope and impact from traditional bullying.

There is no dedicated EU legislation on cyberbullying. We want to learn from legal and educational initiatives in other countries to create a common basis for combating cyberbullying with a gender-sensitive.

We want to empower youth workers and youth with new tools and methods to prevent and tackle cyberbullying from a
gender approach. To this end, we have formulated the following specific objectives:

• PO1 Share knowledge and learn from members’ experience in dealing with cyberbullying in youth associations;
• PO2 Draw a gender-sensitive method to tackle cyberbullying among young people;
• PO3 Empower youth workers and young people with soft skills, the new method and its tools to counteract cyberbullying;

• Project Management and Implementation: planning, finances, coordination and communication, dissemination.
• Transnational Project Meetings for implementation and coordination purposes. There are 3 project meetings:
  • the kick-off will be in Spain;
  • the intermediate meeting in Italy;
  • the final meeting in Poland.
• Learning activities (Individual Support). There will be three learning activities: a 3 days participatory visit to Italy (C1), a 3-day participatory visit to Poland (C2), and a 8-days course to Spain (C3)
• Multiplier Events: conferences, seminars, events sharing and disseminating the intellectual outputs
• Intellectual Outputs: Book

YOUTH WORKERS AND YOUNG PEOPLE
Increase awareness of cyberbullying, its forms, effects and gender dimensions;
They will learn how to detect and deal with cyberbullying, taking into account the needs and capacities of perpetrators and victims;
They will develop critical thinking through self-reflection techniques and improved conflict resolution skills;
They will become active participants in the fight against cyberbullying and support wider inclusion goals.

They will begin to create youth networks that actively engage in the fight against cyberbullying by implementing in their community the tools and methods described in the interactive book.

PARTNERSHIP
Promote social inclusion and emotional education among young people in their countries
Strengthen knowledge of bullying and its manifestations and improve methodologies to counter it by taking gender into account
Gain experience in developing tools, methods and best practices for detection, prevention and gender-sensitive protection

OSO
Develop a deeper view of cyberbullying from a gender perspective.
Improved work with victims of cyberbullying.
Strengthened capacity to test new tools.

PASOS
Gaining knowledge about abuse of power at all levels.
Improved prevention of cyberbullying through NVC tools.
Improved recognition of cyberbullying.

ORIEL
Increased knowledge to work with all roles related to cyberbullying.
Increased awareness of the consequences of cyberbullying.
Strengthened capacity to innovate.

YOUNG WORKERS AND YOUNG PEOPLE who have participated in the project:
-will become aware of the root causes of cyberbullying, its forms, effects and gender dimensions.
-will learn how to detect and deal with incidents of cyberbullying.
-gain critical thinking skills through self-reflection techniques.
-improve their conflict resolution skills and become active participants in the fight against cyberbullying, support the broader goals of social inclusion.
-they will learn how to create youth networks actively involved in the fight against cyberbullying by implementing the methods described in the interactive book.

MEMBERS OF THE PARTNERSHIP:
-will increase their capacity to promote social inclusion and emotional education among young people in their countries, contributing to improved interpersonal relationships and pro-social behaviour that prevents cyberbullying among young people.
-gain greater knowledge of bullying and its manifestations online and improve their prevention methodology through
gender sensitivity.
-gain more experience in developing gender-sensitive tools, methods and best practices for detection, prevention, prevention and protection against cyberbullying.

OSO
-will broaden their vision of youth work by adopting a gender perspective on cyberbullying.
-will gain more skills in working with victims of cyberbullying.
-will strengthen its capacity to test new tools.

PASOS
-will become a reference in the fight against abuse of power at regional, national and international by integrating cyberbullying into its core activities.
-learns ways to better prevent cyberbullying and NVC tools.
-learns tools to counter cyberbullying.

ORIEL
-will gain the knowledge to work with all groups dealing with cyberbullying.
-will increase their awareness of the consequences of cyberbullying.
-will strengthen its potential to innovate.