ChildLine Partners With Habbo For Bully Awareness

Officials from ChildLine, a free and confidential 24-hour helpline for youth in the UK, have announced that the organization has established an online resource within the virtual world of Habbo with a goal of helping to stop children from being bullied. Building upon Habbo's established community, the ChildLine organization plans to offer several events within the service to help raise awareness of bullying. To help with this, ChildLine has also enlisted the assistance of celebrities to come and visit the online community and chat with visitors, though officials have not yet specified who will be involved or when these talks will take place. Created by Sulake Corporation, Habbo is an online community that has proven to be popular with children and teenagers, with the service registering 7 million unique users worldwide each month. The service allows users to create pixilated avatars, called Habbos, in order to interact with the service's various activities. The virtual world combines the concepts of an online game and a chat room, a pairing that has attracted members to create over 66 million Habbos within the online community according to October 2006's Nielsen Netratings. For more information on Habbo or the efforts of ChildLine, visit the official website.