Bullying is a serious problem in Australia, with around one student in every four bullied every two weeks, or more often. Being bullied can impact children’s self-esteem, behaviour, and their ability to concentrate and perform at school.
We want to help schools address bullying behaviour by teaching children to create strong, meaningful relationships with one another.
Better Buddies works by pairing new primary school students with an older buddy, helping students entering their first year of primary school to feel safe, valued and connected to their school community.
95 per cent of principals stated that Better Buddies has helped to create a friendly and caring school
Better Buddies has been designed as a curriculum resource for primary schools, to help schools enhance their existing buddy program or introduce a new buddy system into the school.
It is easy to implement and allows teachers to tailor Better Buddies to suit their school, train students to be buddies and source ideas for buddy activities.
Better Buddies teaches students the values of caring for others, friendliness, respect, valuing difference, including others and responsibility. The Framework aims to create positive behaviour, as well as build students’ self-esteem, connectedness, social skills, trust and sense of community.
Launched in 2000, Better Buddies is now in almost 2000 Australian schools.
For more information on becoming a Better Buddies school visit: www.betterbuddies.org.au, call 1300 341 343, or email firstname.lastname@example.org.
If you are a current Better Buddies school looking to order more Buddy Bears, you need to login to the Better Buddies website. Schools can order bears in packs of 10 at a cost of $80 each incl GST.
Better Buddies Fact Sheet
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