EIPS students rally against bullying on Pink Shirt Day

School hallways were flooded with pink on Wednesday, February 26.

Elk Island Public Schools saw staff and students support a welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment by wearing pink to school.

“Pink Shirt Day is an opportunity to get our students to think about the importance of building positive and healthy relationships,” said EIPS board chair, Trina Boymook. “Initiatives like this create positive impacts in our schools, and help to develop our Division’s priority of creating welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning spaces for all students.”

Activities included assemblies, guest speaker presentations, lesson plans around building healthy relationships, random acts of kindness deeds and more.

Schools also showed their support by posted positive and respectful messages on social media using the hashtag #PinkItForward. For every online post, Coast Capital Savings, a credit union in British Columbia will donate $1 to bullying prevention programs.

Pink Shirt Day began in 2007 when two high school students in Nova Scotia saw a younger student being bullied for wearing a pink shirt. The two students came back to school the next day with 50 pink t-shirts and had classmates wear them in an effort to fight back against bullying.

Today Pink Shirt Day is celebrated across Canada and has raised more than $1.5 million for health relationship programming.

Photo supplied.