Former basketball player Henk Pieterse from Sint Willebrord has been bullied a lot in the past because of his height. He now has a company with which he uses sport in workshops and training sessions to make children aware of the consequences of bullying. Henk was very shocked about the news about 14-year-old Nina from Helmond. “Terribly tragic this, damn it,” he responds to X.
Via www.pestmijmaar.nl, the former Basketball player of 2.11 meters offers the training sessions in schools. “If you are bullying every day, you think you can reach everyone. If someone commits suicide at a school where I have not been, then the thought of your head will haunt that you could have done something about it. Then I almost blame myself.”
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Telephone
“You don’t have to be a gangster and not strong,” Henk continues. “With the push of a button you can cause so much misery. Contemporary bullying usually takes place online. And that is worrying. It goes on 24/7 and some children are on social media until five in the morning.”
The threshold to say something online is also much lower, says the former basketball player: “I say to my friends in the group app if I have not seen them for a long time also ‘I love you’, or ‘I miss you’. In real life you don’t do it that fast. This is how it works much easier than in the real world.”
Henk is therefore happy with the measure taken in Australia: children under the age of sixteen are no longer allowed on social media. “They should also set that here, that would save so many problems. When I started these training sessions twenty years ago I walked through school and looked at me because of my height. Now everything they do is staring at their phone. They look on, then they walk on with their phone again.”
Training by Henk
Henk prefers to visit all schools, but that doesn’t work. “You can’t prevent bullying. But you can make children aware of what impact it has. I always first tell about my basketball history. Then you don’t see children on or around. But when I start talking about my bullying past, they are still close.”
The training sessions that Henk provides consist of basketball lessons where he uses forms of collaboration that in turn must lead to better cooperation and understanding for each other. After six weeks he comes back to see how things are going. “Then I ask the class who comes up most for the other. Who is designated from me a pair of Nike shoes or a ball for his social commitment.”
Bullied yourself
“At the age of fifteen I was more than two meters long. Even my history teacher called me ‘spaghetti -whier’. Until my gym teacher told me that I had to start with basketball.
“After a good insistence, I did that. Then my life changed in one fell swoop. People just called me by my first name instead of ‘long Jan’ or ‘Skeleton’. Those four lines were the safest lines in the world for me.”
Nina stepped out of life through bullying behavior
The Helmondse Nina was bullied at school and could no longer bear the burden. That is why she decided to get out of life on 1 April. To prove Nina a final honor, a silent journey was organized for her. The organization expects hundreds of people on Sunday where Nina felt safe. At the Polish school.
