S-Team Heroes website surpasses one million visits
Online game teaching kids how to handle bullying
Edmonton... Since its launch last June, the S-Team Heroes website has quickly become a popular place for Albertans to learn more about bullying prevention and intervention. Since its launch in June 2005, http://www.teamheroes.ca/ has received more than one million visitors.
“I am extremely pleased to hear that kids are visiting the site,” said Children’s Services Minister Heather Forsyth. “Bullying should never be part of anyone’s childhood. I’ve heard from some adults about the horrible things they had to go through in their youth and they’ve never fully gotten over it. I hope that parents are sitting down and playing the S-Team Heroes game with their kids and talking to them about bullying.”
The S-Team Heroes website features an online game designed to help children develop the skills needed to handle bullying. Tina, Michael, Eric, Dakota and Kiara - the S-Team Heroes - walk children through real-life scenarios and encourage them to use their problem-solving skills to think about how to appropriately respond to different bullying situations. The website is continually updated with new characters and game scenarios.
“All of our students deserve to feel safe at school. The bullying prevention campaign furthers this goal by giving children a fun and interactive way to discover that they have the power to stop bullying,” said Education Minister Gene Zwozdesky. “Communities across the province are also using this material to supplement existing bullying prevention initiatives in their area – and are making a difference.”
In addition to the S-Team Heroes game, the Alberta government has developed a series of posters, fact sheets, and a comic book based on the game for communities with limited Internet access. All of these materials, including a new issue of the S-Team Heroes comic book, are now available to order free-of-charge from http://www.bullyfreealberta.ca/. This website is an online resource for parents and other adults looking for more information on bullying prevention. A teen bullying prevention campaign, including a new online resource for teens, http://www.b-free.ca/ and a provincial, 24-hour, toll-free helpline for children and youth at 1-888-456-2323 were launched on May 12, 2006.
Alberta’s bullying prevention initiative is a result of commitments made during the Alberta Roundtable on Family Violence and Bullying in May 2004.
