 Dad's a bully. Mom's a bully. It's a way of life. Home, a violent place. Bullying makes you stronger. Strong words and even stronger actions all played out by high school students performing in front of wide-eyed middle school students. The high school students, through their acting, want the younger students to know they understand bullying is a problem. Who is her? She probably shops at Kmart. Probably. I think my mom had those pants in 1980. Did she take a shower this morning? She shops at Goodlaw. Did you say her shirt? What is she thinking? Does she look in the mirror when she gets up in the morning? She's so weird. Does she not realize that people don't like her? The high school actors and the middle school audience members are all members of SAD, students against destructive decisions. Push up! Stop it! That's good. You have to be late. Yeah, that's good. More and more youth are realizing the power they have to influence the behavior of their peers and those who are even younger, especially when it comes to the issue of bullying. Seventeen organizations with a mission to assist youth signed on to help with the National Bullying Prevention Campaign, a campaign from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration. These organizations have chapters, affiliates, or clubhouses in communities throughout the country. According to experts, bullying is aggressive behavior that involves an imbalance of power or strength. Typically, it is repeated time and time again. It may involve hitting or kicking, teasing or taunting, or it may involve indirect actions such as manipulating friendships or purposely excluding other children from activities. According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, approximately 30% of all youth in grades 6 through 10 have been bullied or have bullied other children with some frequency within a school term. Did any of you guys feel good when you were bullying Pedro Krista? Students tend to respond to people who are like themselves within the same age category. They listen to them more, they're able to relate to them more as opposed to an older person. So I think from them they would listen and maybe take back some of the messages to friends and use some of the messages in their own life situations as well. Those who work within youth organizations recognize the problem of bullying and its consequences from their first-hand experiences with youth. We believe it's real important not only for adults to equip children, but for children and youth to find ways in which they can help each other. John Rosiak is the director of initiatives for children and youth at the National Crime Prevention Council. They expanded their programming to include bullying under their McGruff series, The Well-known Crime Dog. We were analyzing the mail that we got from children, the snail mail back then, not email. And we realized that we got more mail from children about the bully issue than any other issue. And that really was our early warning system, if you will, that we need to deal with the bully issue. It's out there, kids are concerned about it, and we need to address it. And one of the things that we're working on right now is this whole notion of trying to show the power of positive friendship, how friends can help somebody else out who may be bullied. And that's a real, real important life skill to be able to help a friend. And sometimes it's maybe the thing that can help somebody else. Recently, the Girl Scouts surveyed more than 2,000 girls between the ages of 4 and 17 to find out how they define safety and what are considered safe or unsafe situations. Emotional safety was found to be as important a concern as physical safety. The number one concern for pre-teen girls was being teased or made fun of. Brianna Flores-Kian is a member of the National Bullying Prevention Campaign Youth Expert Panel and a leader in Unity, the United National Indian Tribal Youth Organization. Brianna says the training and skills she has learned while working on this campaign are very valuable. I'm in Tribal Images Youth Council and every time I go to an anti-bullying campaign, I come back and I tell them what I learned about bullying and I share everything that we talked about like in circles. And they learn from it and then we hold like leadership trainings for our youth, high school and middle school and we tell them about it so we all just keep teaching each other. It's hard to have too much sensitivity to these issues. There is always something more to say about it. Penny Wells, the executive director of Students Against Destructive Decisions, says youth leaders and adult volunteers are looking for ways to identify bullying and inform youth about its consequences. In middle school, bullying is a very real issue. And so chapters would invent these programs themselves. They would go where the need was and speak with middle schools about what was really happening in their schools. I was bullied because I was never really good at sports. I mean, I would always be picked last or not picked at all or sort of like that. So I instead realized that that might not be my strength. So I went more towards a different field where I went into theater and stuff like that. So it's just different things for different people. I reacted in a worse way. I reacted by acting the way that people acted to me towards them. Like they called me by nicknames, so I started calling them by nicknames. But now I realize after having seen how it happens to people that you need to just talk to someone. You need to express your feelings. Youth organizations can be part of the answer when looking for bullying prevention solutions. Youth organizations play a big role in getting messages across to teens and pre-teens. Younger kids look up to and listen to older kids. Organizations that want to reach youth with certain issues on health and safety messages should reach out and involve them in programs and project planning. National Organization for Youth Safety Noise is a really good example of this. It gives teens a real voice.