Emma-Jane Cross fighting the culture of fear

Emma-Jane Cross is the Chief Executive of Beatbullying, an association founded in 1999 to empower young people leading anti-bullying campaigns in their schools and communities.
In the last 5 years Beatbullying has worked directly and indirectly with about 700,000 young people. The work involves assisting and supporting those who are being bullied, re-educating and changing the behaviour of bullies and preventing bullying in schools and communities across the UK.

How and why did you become interested in the third sector?
As an academic and lecturer in a previous life, I fast became disappointed and perplexed by the lack of practical application of social policy theory in the UK voluntary and charitable sector and the lack of rigorous reporting and evaluation and business ethics in the third sector. Putting it simply I was motivated and challenged by the confusion and contradictions between social policy theory and practice. I believed when founding Beatbullying that rigorous academic theory, practitioner values and business ethics could be applied to charity start up and that is what I tried to do.

How does Beatbullying work?
The Beatbullying programme utilises and implements Peer Activism : empower students to campaign and decision-make to ensure their school is a safer.
Beatbullying?s highly expert Development Officers, utilise myriad mediums to engage young people including sport, new media, life and campaigning skills training, drama and music.

What would you say are the main challenges faced by civil society in the UK today?
The facts are that Young Britons don?t trust their peers. They don?t feel respected. They don?t talk to their parents. They take too many risks with their sexual and mental health. It?s 30 years since a culture of fear and blame began to percolate through UK society. Consumerism, individualism, the ethos of compete to survive, of society in decomposition, of standards, tests, league tables, short-term contracts, globalization, global terror, global migration, of hate crime, of binge drinking, of playing fields metamorphosing into gated communities. A country where too many people feel a ?no ball games? sign is the best way to contain our youngsters. This theory is our greatest threat to civil society a new generation mostly ignored.

Children are besieged by society, government and media representations of adult fear, mistrust and worry over the UK?s dangerous, violent and criminal youth.

Millions of kids, despite constant demonization, live positive lives; they work hard and do well at school. We are just choosing not to listen, not to notice and not to learn. They have strong and loyal friendships and protect and love their siblings. Young Britons volunteer in their local community. They don?t carry guns or knives. They experiment with drugs and alcohol, but they don?t binge drink or spiral into drug abuse. They take their sexual health very seriously, but they also fall in love and lust and sometimes make mistakes. They have strong views on poverty, the environment, on immigration, on human rights? and I know because I have worked with thousands of children and young people, they love this country, they are all proud to be British and have great hope for the future.

What they also crave is equality, a voice, a sense of identity, a role model, the space to not always get it right, a guiding hand, adults to trust them, the invitation to make a contribution. If we listen and learn and deliver then our civil society is safe in their hands, if we don?t then woe betide us.

What is your opinion about the third sector in the UK?
That the competition is fierce, the stakes are high, sometimes the morals are low, that together we glue the very social fabric of this country together. Coalition is on occasion brilliant, but just as often disastrous, that we should be allowed to disagree without funders having a hissy fit.
I also think that volunteers are the bedrock of this industry, that service users have the answers if we just choose to listen, that we the British have a generation of intelligent, compassionate, proud brilliant young people who are a resource that this nation needs to tap into and finally that if you let it and you should the third sector will take over your life.

The organisations should work as the business sector: build a case, research and measure the solution, make sure it works and then harass government about the problem but also offer them a costed, balanced and effective solution. The business sector offer government solutions, the third sector must do the same.

What, in your opinion, is the potential for partnerships to be established between the private sector and the third sector?
Huge, untapped and the greatest challenge facing the third sector. The private sector have millions they are willing to give away, the sector just needs to continue to prove we have the business acumen, the credentials and the solutions to be worthy of the cash.

What dealings, if any, does your organisation have with third sector organisations in other European countries?
None and that saddens me. Over the last 4 years, BB (BeatBullying) has approached probably 10 European third sector organisations attending to start a dialogue about European funding, partnerships, twinning or best practice and no one was interested. Yet U.S. organisations and Beatbullying are working brilliantly together.

What advice would you give to a young person wanting to make a career in the third sector?
Bring your enthusiasm, your sense of justice, your energy and your hope and you will be just fine, and above all you will be able to look yourself in the mirror knowing you are making a contribution

Do you have a particularly interesting or favorite website to suggest to our readers?
www.respect4us.org.uk