Today, the Municipality of Centar, in cooperation with the Cantonal Public Institution “Educational Center”, organized a walk of elementary school students from the territory of that municipality, on the occasion of marking the International Day of Combating Bullying.
The walk was joined by representatives of the Municipality of Centar, led by Mayor Srđan Mandić in the company of KJU “Educational Center” director Midhat Kerla and judoka Larisa Cerić, who gathered in front of the ARIA Center from 5 a.m. to 12 p.m. and sent a message through a symbolic walk through the city in pink T-shirts on raising the awareness of fellow citizens about the problem of peer violence.
The walk ended on the plateau in front of the Sarajevo National Theater on Suzan Sonntag square, where they were joined by the children from the kindergarten.
“I must say, first of all, that I am proud of everything that the Municipality of Centar is doing, not only today, but of the series of projects that we implement with the aim of preventing and fighting against peer violence. We work together with the non-governmental sector and relevant institutions, and we allocate a lot of we invest in the needs of young people, and today in a symbolic way, with this walk and the color pink, which is a symbol of the fight against peer violence, we want to send an important message to all our children that they are not alone and that if peer violence happens, that they have someone to report to, that there is someone to protect,” said Mandić.
Namely, the aim of today’s walk was to encourage the relevant institutions to react in a timely manner and to mandatory prevention, in order to ultimately act preventively, and not when the consequences occur.
“Today, the Municipality of Centar, in cooperation with the Cantonal Public Institution “Education Center”, organized an activity, and during the walk we distributed messages to all participants, in order to constantly remind them that the fight against peer violence is not a matter of just one day, but it must be our permanent commitment and must represent every organization and every individual. This problem is not the issue of just one institution, this is the issue of the whole society, and parents have a particularly important role in this,” said the director of KJU “Educational Center” Midhata Kerla.
The International Day Against Peer Violence has been marked since 2007, when a boy in Canada was exposed to peer violence because he came to school in a pink T-shirt as a sign of support for his mother, who was suffering from breast cancer. Peers ridiculed, mentally and physically abused that boy who wore a pink shirt. The next day, all the boys and girls of the same school wore pink t-shirts as a sign of solidarity towards the abused boy, announced the Information Department of the Municipality of Centar Sarajevo, Fena news agency reports.
