Marshalltown Not In Our Town

Activities, Challenges & Lesssons Learned

ACTION HIGHLIGHTS

We have brought Rachel's Challenge to the community to hold assemblies for middle school and high school youth; we have held a community rally on anti-bullying that had 1,000 people wearing orange NIOT T-Shirts meet at the Courthouse square, have a meal and sign a pledge to stand up to bullying in all forms; we sponsored a Unity Picnic with Immigrant Allies and about 150 people attended to share a meal and reach out to our Hispanic population; we bought the rights to show at no cost the movies Finding Kind and Light In The Darkness and hosted pannel discussions with the audiences afterwards to discuss bullying issues in our community; we sponsored an 'orange-out' at one of our local high school football games and over 2,000 people showed up in orange and joined in the anti-bullying message; we encouraged and solicited people to sign an anti-bullying pledge and over 2,000 people signed the pledge and we published the names in the newspaper; we built a Not In Our Town float and entered it in the annual Oktemberfest Parade in town and over 20,000 people lined the streets and saw 100 people wearing orange NIOT T-shirts walking alongside the float handing out over 4000 NIOT wristbands; we published over 100 PSA ads in the local newspaper over the last five months to promote anti-bullying; we have been selected to particiapte in a statewide anti-bullying summit hosted by the governor of Iowa and present what Marshalltown is doing to prevent bullying and we have been asked to present our program at a national school conference in Washington DC on what communities can do to prevent bullying.

CHALLENGES

Keeping the anti-bullying movement fresh and coming up with ongoing events to keep it in front of everyone.

LESSONS

Keeping the anti-bullying movement fresh and coming up with ongoing events to keep it in front of everyone.

ALLIES

Schools, Law Enforcement, YMCA/YWCA, Non-profits, Business community, Immigrant Allies

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