Project Anti Bully is non-profit organization that raises awareness about the prevalence of bullying in middle schools globally. It is also encourages students to communicate with parents, adults or teachers more about the issues they are undergoing at school or around social groups. Project Anti Bully hopes to decrease the percentage of bullying in school by spreading the results from their data.
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In the winter of 2005, Fabianna Pergolizzi had received a calendar from CAPS ((The Childs Abuse Prevention Services) which had enclosed information about bullying and its affects on students. CAPS had passed out an anonymous survey to the middle school students in the Long Island schools, to find the prevalence of bullying. As a victim of cruel bullying, she had decided to take a stand against bullying and have her voice be heard. Fabianna had then contacted CAPS to see if she would be able to borrow their survey to distribute to the middle schools in Florida. As CAPS had accepted the request, she also contacted her friends across the United States, to see if they would be interested in distributing the survey throughout the states they currently lived in. To see the survey that Project Anti Bully distributed, please see blow. Darren Richmond, Samantha Marcario, Zoë Gan and Paul Auster had all agreed to help find the prevalence of bullying within their state's middle schools by handing out the surveys. The surveys were passed out during first week of May. By the end of August 2006, all the results of the data were entered and analyzed to create an abstract. With the abstract created, the project was finally named, Project Anti Bully. In September of 2006, Project Anti Bully had sent the abstract to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) with the hopes of Project Anti Bully being able to present at the 160th Annual Conference in San Diego.
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By January of 2007, Project Anti Bully was officially accepted to present at the American Psychiatric Association, in May. Fabianna (first author), her Father Dr. Joseph Pergolizzi, Darren Richmond (second author) and his mother Dr. Charlotte Richmond, all attended the conference in San Diego. As Fabianna and Darren were presenting their findings, many well known persons were utterly shocked by their age of 16. At the end of their presentation, Fabianna became the youngest presenter in 160-year history of the APA, which was an extreme honor. All of the investigators in Project Anti Bully have been acknowledged for their courage to stand up against bullying by finding the prevalence of bullying in middle schools. The results of Project Anti Bully's data show that 86% of students everyday are being abused physically, emotionally or mentally by bullies within their school. Project Anti Bully uses their data to show to school personnel, parents, adults and students the prevalence of bullying within their child/student/ school. Also Project Anti Bully encourages students to communicate with adults about the issues that they are dealing with. Currently, the abstract from the second-year follow-up study (2006-2007 results) from Project Anti Bully was accepted for a poster presentation in Boston at the American Psychological Association's annual conference in August 2007. The American Psychological Association is the major meeting for psychologists all over the world. Since then both investigators have traveled to Dublin, Ireland to present at the British Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association in 2008. Project Anti Bully is known for their slogan "Raise Awareness, Not Anger". It has become a non-profit organization as of 2010.
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The Bully Survey | To download the PDF file of the survey used within Project Anti Bully's research, click the icon on the left.
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