13^th March is International Bystander Awareness Day.  This day is used to raise awareness of how to be an active bystander, how to intervene and which tactics to used in different situations. 

On 13^th March 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed, raped and murdered on her way home from work in the early hours of the morning in Queens, New York.  She was 30 metres away from her apartment building. The attack lasted 30 minutes.

When the police investigated they found that 38 people has seen or heard the attack – no one helped her or called the police,  with one man “viewing the murder from his third-floor apartment window, stated later that he rushed to turn up his radio so he wouldn’t hear the woman’s screams”.

This case is start of the “bystander concept “ research, a social psychological phenomenon where people are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present – the diffusion of responsibility.

62 years later people still are passive bystanders not intervening to help others – A bystander is ‘a person who does not become actively involved in a situation where someone else requires help’ Bystander Games: P Clarkson, 1996 and

“It’s very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystanders do nothing.
He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil.
The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain, the victim demands action, engagement and remembering”

Judith Herman (The Crimes of Complicity, The Bystander in the Holocaust)

NWG Network sports team deliver active bystander training. This is available to anyone working/volunteering in the sport, leisure and physical activity sectors.  This training is delivered face to face and can be delivered over different formats for different participants:

• 6 hours for professionals
• 3 hours for apprentices
• 2 hours for volunteers in grassroots sport, leisure or physical activity
• 90 minutes for 14-17 year olds

The training focusses on why  so many in sport have failed children by simply looking the other way , we also address increasing levels of violence against women and girls (VAWG) but we also looks at issues regarding men and boys and the impact and influence that external factors can have on their behaviour, online and in the real world, we also focus on all types of discrimination that sadly we see every day in our communities, both sporting and social. We look in-depth at how we can all become active bystanders and make a significant change in children’s lives.

For more information on this training for professionals and volunteers, please contact Angie or Kev in the NWG Network Sports team on: [email protected] or [email protected]