The Townships group that turns bullied girls into leaders

Every Saturday for four months, five girls curled up on the couches in Mable Hastings' office at the Missisquoi-North Youth Centre in Mansonville, in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

For an hour and a half they talked about their week, about the bullying they saw and experienced andabout how to respond. But most importantly the girls learned they were fabulous, and so is everyone else.

The girls are part of a special anti-bullying group called the Fabulous Five.

• School board ordered to pay damages to former student over bullying

Nine-year-oldKate-Mackenzie Eldridge says bullies "are still fabulous even though they are mean. It's just that they bully people.That's the only problem they still have in their bodies."

"They don't realize they are bullying, they just think they are making funny jokes," she said.

Mable Hastings, the director of youth programs at the Mansonvillecentre, hand-picked the five girls after hearing from their parents that they were having trouble dealing with bullies at school.

She gave the girls a "toolkit" to deal with bullies. The tools include suggestions like "walk away,""ask what's the problem" and "say 'it's allright if you don't want to play with me today, maybe we can try again tomorrow.'"

• Boucherville school workshop on bullying ends in tears, insults

The idea, according to Hastings,is to empower the girls and to train them to be leaders.

"I really wanted them to learn they don't have to play the victim, and if someone hurts you, you can go talk to someone," Hastings said.

"But you don't have to live it and let it bring you down."

Sharing Sessions

Each session begins with a check-in about the week. Sometimes the session is spent doing workshops about interactions and bullying, or reading books and discussing what the characters are going through.

Othertimesthe meeting becomes a kind of therapy session for a particular girl.

That was the case last month when CBC attended a meeting, and Eldridgehad a particularly rough week.

She sat in the corner of the couch. The pain of her experience seemed to wash over her.

"I sometimes can't remember the idea [of I'm fabulous] so I get angry and more sad and more shy," Kate said.

• Quebec bullying victim finds respect with social media plea

She spoke openly, and considered solutions to the problem. Her peers offered suggestions about what to do and 10-year-old Maeva Giroux comforted her.

"You know it's not your fault that you're being bullied," she said. "Kate, you are fabulous, so I know you can get past this."

A smile spread across Eldridge'sface.

Creating Leaders

Bad days aside, the girls say the Fab Five group has helped them.

"Before the group everything was just wrong because I was getting bullied even more," says the youngest member of the group, eight-year-old Kadie Barnes.

• LISTEN: The Mean Years on Quebec AM

"It kind of hurt my feeling a little bit because it felt like nobody cared about me,"Barnes said. "But now it feels like people care about me a little bit."

Her mother, Samantha Wykes, says Kadie recently received a certificate from her teacher because she intervened when she saw a classmate being excluded during a group activity and asked her to join her group.

"I definitely see her as being a leader and I really, really like that," Wykes said."She is stepping up when she sees other people need help."

The Fab Five group is on a break for the summer but will start up again in September.

Hastings has applied for a grant to make the program available to other age groups, all while keeping each group small. She says she needs $2,400 to pay for supplies such as workbooks for more groups.