In February we wear pink, and not just because of Valentine's Day!

Fifteen years ago, the national Pink Shirt Day movement started as a way to promote kindness and take a stand against bullying.

Locally, the movement has caught on and it typically sees widespread participation from Cochrane schools, businesses and members of the community.

Pink Shirt Day is celebrated annually on the last Wednesday of February, but since that coincides with Rocky View Schools (RVS) February break, the wave of pink will come to many local schools early this year.

Child Development Advisor (CDA) for Fireside School, Charlene Abrahams explains that the school's grade three leadership class is in charge and facilitating Pink Shirt Day activities for the entire K-8 school.

"Our grade three ambassadors have organized and coordinated the entire event and we have four classes that are part of it," explains Abrahams. " We're starting off by doing announcements every day. Each class does that, where they're talking about kindness or how to be a friend."

Abrahams says that the announcements will be done each day this week leading up to the schoolwide event on Thursday, February 17.

"On Thursday we're going to have some ambassadors outside the school cheering on every single student as they come into school to welcome them into school saying 'you rock' or 'you're awesome' -- they've made some awesome signs for that," explains Abrahams. "Then they're going to distribute stickers and affirmations throughout the day to all the kiddos through the school so they have a little positive message to them."

Leading and carrying out a movement of this kind isn't an easy feat, but Abrahams says that the grade three ambassadors are up for the challenge.

"We're trying to build our school from the bottom up in terms of building very strong leaders from the early grades and hopefully continuing through to the upper grades," explains Abrahams. "It's our first year doing this kind of initiative with these students stepping up and being part of it and it's pretty exciting for them. They're just so excited to be part of something that they created."

The students and staff at  Fireside school will be proudly sporting their pink shirts this Thursday and taking a stand against bullying.