ARTICLE BY BRYN LEVY | SASKATOON STAR PHOENIX | NOVEMBER 17, 2020
The pandemic is creating new challenges for a program that seeks to help end bullying in Saskatoon schools.
As Saskatchewan marks the start of Bullying Awareness and Prevention week in the midst of a surging global pandemic, a Saskatoon youth program is finding new ways to make a difference.
Winston Blake is executive director of the Restorative Action Program (RAP), a community based initiative providing conflict resolution, leadership and relationship management training and support in local schools.
“The purpose of education is education. It’s not mental health or crime prevention, it’s education. So if we really want to support kids, we have to provide the environment that lends that support. That’s what RAP is,” Blake said via video call with the StarPhoenix.
The program began in 2002 as a three-year pilot project at Mount Royal Collegiate, supported by the Rotary Club of Saskatoon.
“(Rotary) are the backbone, the glue that started RAP within this community,” Blake said. The pilot at Mount Royal showed success in lessening conflict between students, diverting kids away from the justice system and reducing dropout rates. All five Saskatoon-based Rotary clubs would subsequently get involved, along with a network of corporate and individual donors and volunteers. Today, RAP operates in nine Saskatoon high schools.
Blake came to the program in 2007, working at Bedford Road Collegiate. In many ways, his career in Saskatoon has tracked alongside the rise of smartphones and social media; the first iPhone came out that year and just a year earlier, Facebook had first opened its membership beyond university campuses.
He said where conflicts between students used to just play out at school, these days they often percolate in the online realm well outside school hours.
“Cyber-bullying is a massive issue…there is a cyber component to more than half our cases. And if it doesn’t actually begin in the cyber world, it will go to the cyber world very quickly.”
Blake said the rise of technology has added many challenges over the last decade; the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen that same technology harnessed to help the RAP program continue its work.
“We had to adjust our services on the fly and become very adaptive to an online platform,” Blake said of efforts to meet kids where they’re at in the virtual world, particularly when schools closed in the spring.
He said another trend to emerge out of the pandemic has been more parents reaching out to RAP facilitators.
“Part of that may have been the fact that parents spent more time with their kids than they probably ever did before, so they got a chance to get to know their kids maybe in ways they didn’t know their kids before.”
Blake said he thinks more acceptance of using tools like video conferencing could help the program achieve longer-term goals. Pre-pandemic, there was considerable ambition to get RAP programs running elsewhere in the province.
“That will be incredible to see the Yorktons, the Prince Alberts, the Reginas have their own opportunity to help their kids in the way in which we’ve done in Saskatoon.”
Blake said the program is already working to take a half-day conflict management training program for local businesses professionals online. He said he can foresee further use of online training and support for budding RAP programs across Saskatchewan.
“It does, actually, provide an opportunity. I think it’s something we ourselves didn’t see as something we could have utilized in the past,” he said of using digital tools to bridge the vast distances of the Prairies.
But first, Blake said there’s the matter of keeping the program currently running in Saskatoon strong through the ongoing challenge of the pandemic.
“As many not-for-profits, many organizations like ours have really been affected by covid and the interruption of our ability to raise funds and to provide services in many ways. We do need people to continue to support us, to remain engaged with what we’re doing.”