Residents were urged to be watchful for incidents of cyberviolence and to stand up to help victims, members and guests of the Weyburn Rotary Club heard at their meeting on Thursday at the Legion Hall.
Juli Dzuba, community outreach and volunteer coordinator at Envision Counselling, spoke to the club about what cyberviolence is, and what Envision was able to compile as resources during a two-year pilot project that ended in 2016.
Envision had applied for and obtained a federal grant on cyberviolence, only one of two agencies in Saskatchewan to receive the grant, covering a program that ran from 2014 to the end of 2016.
By making the resources easily accessible, said Dzuba, “you are empowering the relationship between the child and parent or guardian.”
“This project provided a better understanding of what cyberviolence is,” said Dzuba, and the result is the compilation of great resources “which we are willing to share. The more people know about what’s going on, the more we are dealing with cyberviolence.”
Asked if this is the same as cyberbullying, Dzuba noted that when people use the term cyberbullying, they tend to think it isn’t that serious as it’s online, but cyberviolence “is a lot more aggressive” as young people target hateful or mean comments towards other people, and they “get a lot more violent on-line.”
