KIAMA'S Glenn Haworth hopes an upcoming documentary will help teenagers, their families and school teachers to better deal with the issue of bullying.
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A keen musician and managing director of Haworth's Music Centre, the 30-year-old has spent the past couple of years travelling to high schools across the Illawarra with his Haworth's Music School Tour, to talk to students about overcoming bullying.
Those experiences, as well as Mr Haworth's personal experiences with bullying from his teenage years have formed the inspiration for the documentary.
"The last couple of years I've been doing the school tours, I go to a school and play a few songs to engage with the kids then I talk to them about bullying and issues like anxiety that go along with it," Mr Haworth said.
"The things I talk about are things like emphasising that if you're being bullied there are always people like family, teachers and counsellors that you can talk to, that no matter how alone you feel there is somebody who will listen.
"Most schools are doing the right thing in addressing bullying, but it's still a big issue, especially with the rise of social media, that I think we need to keep shining the light on it, which hopefully the documentary will do."
Appearing in the documentary will be Kiama's Ness Love-Monk, whose daughter Courtney took her own life in 2012.
"Ness Love-Monk was part of a school tour I did at Albion Park High School recently, she came along and shared her story and it was amazing to see how the kids responded to that, when we were done there was a swarm of kids around her asking her questions and it was great to see," Mr Haworth said.
"Stories like Ness's show the worst possible outcome of bullying and stories like that are why we need to do more to address bullying and hopefully the documentary can get people to do that and it might even make people who are doing the bullying change their behaviour."
"We also talk to some therapists and psychologists and they talk about how people should deal with bullying.
Mr Haworth said the documentary, being produced and directed by Daniel Cartwright from Albion Park, is expected to be launched later this year.