What does it take to wake up a society that is so inured to child abuse? Abuse of all kinds – physical, mental, emotional, sexual. What does it take to create awareness about this epidemic called Child Abuse?
The society is taking a knee-jerk reaction to the unfortunate incident that happened recently in Bangalore. Installing CCTVs and having background checks will not prevent child abuse. What if the perpetrator is a close relative – an uncle perhaps? Simply telling them about good-touch/bad-touch will not do it either. What if the child is confused about what is happening and not able to decide on an action?
We at Aarohi have been working on creating awareness amongst children, parents, schools about this issue. We look at child abuse from a very different perspective. A perspective of empowering the child on a continuous basis. Not an one-off workshop imposed on a child to mug up ways of reacting to a particular situation. But a sustained way of working through not just a sexual abuse situation but ANY situation in life; where the child can think independently and creatively for solutions by himself.
We want to engage with parents as they are usually the people children will go to most of the time when encountering any trouble. Another reason is that this is not a smallpox shot that can be administered once in a lifetime to the child. If we think that sending our child to a ‘Safety workshop’ is the end of the journey then we could be in for a shock. The family needs to be looking at abuse on a continuous basis for it to have any meaning. Thus empowering parents to empower their children is the best approach we feel to sustain this initiative.
What we are doing at Aaorhi – Bringing this topic in many different ways –
- Thought club – free flow of thought what does one thinks about safety and self constraint.
- Conduct safety clubs where kids are the conductors,
- Bring in stimulation, Flocci – some sample here
- Kids looking into the various safety measures at Aarohi – Physical, Emotional and Sexual safety.
- Making kids consultant to advise “what do in case of abuse”. here are sample quetsiosn. To see a video on this topic please click here.
- Keeping it open and regular topic at Aarohi.
- Making it a theme for one month for Cubs and bring variosu activities on good touch, bad touch and safety.