A movement that was started in Canada by two Nova Scotia high school students to promote anti-bullying has become an international day of awareness and people across the province pulled out their pink shirts on Tuesday to show their support.

The ‘Pink Shirt Day’ campaign was initiated by two students in support of a classmate who was being bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school. The boys organized a pink protest and distributed pink T-shirts to all the boys at the school to support the Grade 9 student who had been harassed.

Since then, the campaign has been adopted by a number of other countries and is held annually on February 22 in Canada.

The point of the campaign is to raise awareness about bullying and encourage people to practice kindness and acceptance towards others.

Several schools in Calgary held their own events to mark the occasion on Tuesday.

Students at Nelson Mandela High School celebrated their first Pink Shirt Day this year and educators say the day helps empowers students to deal with bullying on their own without adult intervention.

“We’re seeing more and more that students are standing up for their friends, they’re standing up for those that are maybe not their friends but someone who they see an injustice happening and so a lot of times students are even coming to administration or coming to an adult in the building to say, hey you know I saw this happen, I need some help with this and so it’s not just the victims coming forward, but it’s other people and I think we’re going to get to a place where if we build the skill sets of students to do that, they wouldn’t always have to rely on adults for that assistance. Hopefully we can build their confidence to be able to stand up and take a stand,“ said Principal, Teresa Martin.

“I feel that I can make a stand because in Grade 6, even I was bullied, so I feel that that time I didn’t do anything because I was too scared that other people wouldn’t listen to me or not but right now, after hearing all these guest speakers, I feel that even I could bring a change in society,” said Smruti Patel, Grade 10 student.

The provincial has put the following supports in place to help people with bullying:

For more information on Pink Shirt Day, click HERE.