How We’re Making a Difference

What we’re doing...

We wanted to find out how conflict is handled in different cultures and in different places in the country. We created a survey for students around the world to give us their thoughts on how violence could be stopped in our schools. Our teacher helped us connect with students from several countries.

We then made a presentation to the local middle school on bullying and ways to end conflict peacefully. We felt that if we could influence kids before they even get to high school, things would be better in the future. So we created a short skit from the things we learned from our survey and research, and presented it to small groups of 7th and 8th graders. We also included a question and answer session at the end. It went really well. But we wanted to do more to help students of our school today—not just tomorrow.

So we have established a SAVe club at school to bring in more people to help work on projects. We meet once a week during lunch to talk about current issues at school, work on ideas for making things better, and plan an event once a quarter to promote nonviolent ways of dealing with conflict. Our epals from the Romeo and Juliet unit are working with us to gather ideas and find ways that we can join together across the country to work together for peaceful resolutions of conflict.

To contact us, either respond to our survey or e-mail our faculty sponsor at SAVe@washington.edu.