The Pride of Britain Award-winning national children's charity Bullying UK is facing closure by September 1, 2010 unless it can raise £50,000 to allow it to continue providing help, advice and support to more than 500,000 young people and their families a year through its unique helpline and online services.

Over the last 12 years, the small team of one staff member and four volunteers have worked on a shoestring budget, using cutting edge technology to raise awareness and provide high quality advice to children, their parents and schools.

“In past years the charity has relied on the help of businesses across the UK to support our work in the absence of any government grants, but the financial crisis means it has been difficult to source corporate help," said CEO and founder John Carnell.

"We have recently been refused central government funding, even though our service provides a lifeline to suicidal young people and distressed parents every single day. All we need to fund the service for a year is £50,000. We must be one of the most cost effective children's charities in the UK."

"If Bullying UK shuts down, the government will need to provide two fully trained civil servants 24/7, 365 days a year, with an expertise to advise not only on complex education complaints, special needs and school appeal tribunals but to deal with suicidal children, school refusers, children suffering psychological problems and parents involved with social services and the police.

"We are asking people and businesses across the UK to please help us, so when the new school term starts Bullying UK will be here to support every family desperate for help. Donations can be made online at www.justgiving.com/SaveBullyingUK . Corporate support is particularly welcome."

Over the last 12 years volunteers for the charity, formerly called Bullying Online, have replied to more than 64,000 emails, and they supply 150,000+ leaflets to schools and youth organisations every year.

The charity has a particular expertise in dealing with cyber bullying issues, which currently make up more than 20% of the emails it receives.

"In addition to our web service through the Bullying UK website at www.bullying.co.uk we provide an iphone application and mobile website at m.bullying.co.uk so that families have our advice in their hands to access when they need it most." said John.

Families who have accessed our help are speaking out to praise the essential support we have given them.:

"At a time when we were at a loss to know the best thing to do for our child, Bullying UK were able to help us giving direction and doing so helpfully and quickly” - Graham

“We have received tremendous help over the past few years. Bullying UK has been incredibly supportive and given a huge amount of useful information and consideration to our personal plight” - Debbie

"Bullying UK gave immediate most needed emotional support by replying promptly to my email” - Bernadette

“Bullying UK provided empathy and understanding but above all else the advice gave me the direction and control to approach the school in the most appropriate way and take the relevant steps to resolve the situation” - Sarah

Bullying UK has won many awards for our low cost, high impact work including: The Daily Mirror Pride of Britain award in 2005 for our advice service; The TalkTalk Innovation award for our digital anti-bullying Poster Creator; The BT Seen & Heard Award - for our music, art, video and verse project, The Zone; The Big Issue Big Difference Award for our advice service; The BT National eWell Being Award for our advice service; We have been finalists in the Guardian Charity Awards (three times) and finalist in the government's National eCommerce Awards (twice).

Google are releasing a new add-on to their popular email service Google Mail.

Google Buzz is a real time social network that is being automatically added to ALL Google Mail accounts over the next few days.

Bullying UK is concerned that younger users may not be aware of the privacy implications of Google Buzz.

Twitter is popular with everyone but due to the very open nature of Twitter younger users should take extra caution. Remember everything you post to Twitter with an open profile can be seen by anyone in the world and is very easy to search for.

We suggest you put your Twitter profile into PRIVATE mode as this will stop the world seeing your updates.

Login at Twitter.com and go to SETTINGS. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Protect my tweets". Click save.

If you would like someone to see your update you will have to FOLLOW each other, if another Twitter user follows you they can't see your updates until you follow back. This gives you control over who gets to see what you are up to.

Twitter is the hottest social network around, used by many celebrities to keep in touch with fans and by citizens all over the world to break news stories or just say what they are up to at any given moment.

While Twitter has been great at helping people communicate quickly and in a very open manner, it's not without its problems. Always follow the usual rules of cyber safety and in addition here are some Twitter specific safety tips.

Twitter Safety Tips

• Never give out your real address, or any personal details - Remember on Twitter everything you say can be open to the world;
• Never give out your password - Also be extra careful when you sign into Twitter through other websites. (Some are scams trying to find out your log-in details!);
• Think before you Tweet! -  Anyone can see what you say unless you make your profile private;
• Don't Follow Back people you don't know - This can help protect you against Direct Message spam. You can still talk publicly using @replies;