Gabriel Attal launches a new national “prevention” campaign against “a poison”

Gabriel Attal, the resigning Prime Minister, announced on Sunday 1 September, the eve of the start of the school year, the launch of a new national campaign against bullying at school. The former Minister of National Education, who has made the fight against this scourge a “absolute priority”will visit the Jean de la Fontaine school in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine) on Monday morning to present this initiative and to speak in particular to the students who are returning to school, “sometimes with a knot in my stomach” because they are victims of harassment, Matignon said.

The fact that Gabriel Attal has resigned, which prevents him from announcing new measures or new funding, does not pose any problems, according to Matignon, because it is a campaign of “prevention” and not of “valuation”.

This campaign, launched Monday morning on social networks, television and radio, takes the form of a “filmed social experiment”created in collaboration with the e-Enfance association and child psychiatrists, to raise awareness among adults of this violence. In the campaign’s video clip, adults imagine scenes of harassment by putting themselves in the shoes of those being harassed or the harassers, before being confronted with real situations reported by the dedicated telephone number 3018.

More than a million children are victims of bullying each year in France. “Harassment is a poison. But we are finding the antidote. (…) After the awareness at all levels, the change in mentality must continue to be felt everywhere on the ground”stressed Gabriel Attal in remarks reported by Matignon.