Devoted to those hard power tasks, but although we devote less resources to soft power there are probably more important and soft power is where you change the hearts and minds of people. Where you try to change cultures, try to change the norms in the community are and certainly in our office we devote significant resources to this. Just a couple of examples. We have something called the parent project, and i am very grateful in a time of really reduced funding our board of supervisors stepped up and provided funding for otherwise what was run on a shoe string out of our office, and its a program that teaches parents to be better parents and parents get referred this program through schools, through Police Department, through their churches and some of the behavior that we see in schools are behavior they are learning at home, so we try to address this through this project. We offer it all over Santa Clara County and in english and spanish and vietnamese and that is one example of wha
They dont think this is a big deal. Yeah. Youve been through training to stop bullying so what does that mean . Well try to stop it and well try to get them to stop saying those things. Have you done that so far . Have you been able to intercede . Yeah. What happened . They stopped. Nobody did anything bad to you . No. How did that make you feel . Good. Good job. Thank you so much, honey. There are two things that she raises that i just want to highlight. One is the role of the teacher, what they can do and what can the peers do. I think one of the truisms that teachers need to remember, they know they just need to remember it,. Their leadership as a team is compromised so whatever that team is, the football team, the basketball, the student counsel, the peer leaders. If the peer leader doesnt do the right thing and this is my initiative and if you dont do the right thing you dont look like what know what youre doing and that isnt cool and you didnt do your job that well, if we get in
6foot something. Next to him is [applause] and next to him is George Gaston and elect to the District Attorney of the city and county of San Francisco in 2011 after winning more than 62 of the vote which in San Francisco is very enviable and focused on reducing violent crime, protecting vulnerable victims and respecting with high School Truancy and rel havent to the conversation today. Last is cheryl young and the chief executive director of gate path and oversees a large nonprofit in San Mateo County and focus on turning disabilities into possibilities and shes a wonderful addition to the panel and its an area that School Districts have to deal with in terms of special needs and what were talking about affects these children if not more than the other children so thank you cheryl. [applause] so we have a large panel and they can all tell you i sent them an email yesterday said you will have a brief time to say what you do, what your organization is doing, address the needs of the kids
At home, so we try to address this through this project. We offer it all over Santa Clara County and in english and spanish and vietnamese and that is one example of what we do. A Second Initiative we are working to make happen is something called school Link Services where theres all of these different resources floating out there to help children, to help young people, but often its not centralized in the school and so it involves a lot of cooperation and collaboration between all different county agencies and were sphere heading that, so those are some of the efforts we have taken in our office, and again from a perspective of the prosecutor and it really offends our sensibility for someone to be taking advantage of to be harmed or abused and we want there to be justice for that victim and we want that offender to change their ways and we want that the climate and culture in which the bullying takes place begins to change and its not acceptable so we use a combination of hard power
That bullying is normative; that bullying is normal, and that clip illustrated that the school is sending that message, and there is a difference, an important distinction between the school sort of embodying and sending the message to the kids that bullying is just a part of growing up and believing that bullying in our school is normative because it simply isnt. The data shows bullying is going down and that is not a popular thing to say these days. Bullying is a very important social problem that we need to fix, but it is not an epidemic and its not on the rise and neither is Cyber Bullying and the top scholars in the country and in social science and psychology that saying that, so thats an important distinction so thank you both so much. And there is that and theres a balance between i mean when i hear that bullying is going down i mean all of us should rejoice because that to me is indicative of the fact of the work in communities across the country are starting to pay off, but i