Friends is a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of mobbing or bullying*. We educate and support schools and sports clubs throughout Sweden. Our vision is to see young children and adolescents grow up in a safe and secure society where all are treated equally.
Friends uses a long-term approach to increase the knowledge and involvement of adults and children through education, guidance and the formation of public opinion. We currently have 40 employees with varying backgrounds as well as extensive experience in working with children and young adults. Our backgrounds include experience as educators, teachers, sports trainers, behavioral scientists and similar professions. Friends is located across Sweden in four regional offices. We have worked together with over 1500 schools since we began the organization in 1997.
Our activities are financed by donations from private individuals and companies as well as through honorariums received for the education and training programmes we conduct. Friends has a so-called 90-account and is controlled by Svensk Insamlingskontroll (The Swedish Foundation for Fundraising Control).
Vision & Mandate
Friends’ vision:
A society where young children and adolescents grow up secure and are treated equally.
Friends’ mandate:
To prevent and stop all mobbing in Swedish schools and sports clubs.
We do this over the long-term through education, guidance and follow up. In addition, we are active in the formation of public opinion to increase knowledge and involvement.
Friends’ core values:
Involved, knowledgeable, professional.
* The word bullying is used to describe a repeated pattern of negative intrusive violational behaviour against one or more targets and comprises constant trivial nit-picking criticism, refusal to value and acknowledge, undermining, discrediting and a host of other behaviours. The word mobbing is preferred to bullying in continental Europe and in those situations where a target is selected and bullied (mobbed) by a group of people rather than by one individual.