Video: Falkirk students take their violence prevention message to Holyrood

Graeme High School's Mentoring in Violence Prevention (MVP) group have been using Tik Tok, Instagram and Twitter to engage with others and help get their violence prevention message across to as many people as possible.

Their online endeavours have been so successful – bringing in over 260,000 views so far – that some of the schools MVP mentors have been given the opportunity to be involved with Interfaith Edinburgh’s Holocaust Memorial Day.

A film they made is due to be shown at the Scottish Parliament event on Thursday, with an introduction from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Graeme High teachers Grant Quinn and Victoria Jenkins help run the MVP programme at the school.

Grant said: “MVP is a peer mentoring programme that gives young people the chance to explore and challenge the attitudes, beliefs and cultural norms that under pin gender based violence, bullying and other forms of violence.

"This year a number of our S5 young people have been trained as mentors and have been delivering sessions to S1 and S2 pupils to raise awareness of key issues related to social justice including LGBTQ+ issues, bullying and controlling relationships.

"In a bid to expand our message our Mentors created a Tik Tok account to reach a wider audience to promote social change in the local and wider community. Our account – MVP@Graeme – has gained success, amassing 13.5k likes and an estimated 263k views.

"This is an incredible achievement for our young people,”

Two of the S5 pupils involved, Charlotte Grey and Lucy Forrest, both 16, starred in Falkirk Herald photographer Michael Gillen’s short video to tell people what the MVP initiative is all about.

They said: “We work with younger pupils to raise awareness of important issues within our society and we give them a safe space where they can talk about different questions or different topics they don't quite understand yet.

"Our Tik Tok we started here at Graeme High has soared – it has gone viral so it’s one of our main social media platforms.”