Buddy: Helping School-age Children to Combat Bullying

Abstract

Bullying has been an ongoing and prevalent problem at school for years. School-age children need a way to feel safe and protected in their own school and be able to ask for help when being bullied. With the goal of improving quality education, we created the Buddy key chain and app aiming at combating bullying in regard to school-age children, parents, and teachers involved in the issue of bullying in elementary schools and middle schools. The Buddy key chain is an automatic, discreet device with a secret button that alerts parents and teachers of instances of bullying directly from the student who is bullied or witnesses bullying. When the button is pressed, the parents and teachers attached to that student's account will be alerted. This provides the student with a way to report the bullying without encouraging the bullying to continue. The issue this device solves is the lack of quality education. Students cannot learn effectively if they do not feel safe in their learning environment.