By Fahim Ahmed Ansari | Project Leader
Child Sexual Abuse affects 1 in 2 children in India. Over time, our experiences and research have shown us, that adults taking steps to equip themselves with the right knowledge and tools, and imparting Personal Safety Education to children can play a great role in addressing this issue. We wanted to create a space for people to come together to create a dialogue on this issue, take action, and change the narrative around Child Safety by looking at it through a lens of hope and not fear.
It was with this vision and hope that Arpan launched Child Safety Week, from 14th to 20th November 2019. The Child Safety Week was an initiative towards building a people-led movement for collective action for change towards addressing concerns of child sexual abuse - by way of dedicating a concentrated period annually for conversations, actions and change efforts for Child Safety. For greater engagement with stakeholders, Child Safety Week was planned around key dates relevant to children and Child Rights that fall in this period, namely:
- 14th November: Children's Day, India
- 19th November: World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse
- 20th November: International Children's Day
Key support came from Vidya Balan, the goodwill ambassador of Arpan as she launched Child Safety Week and took the Child Safety Pledge, urging her followers to take action on this pertinent issue.
Click here to view Vidya Balan's video.
Child Safety Week 2019 emerged as a true community-led initiative with 102 organisations participating in it.
Community Building: Engaging different stakeholders for taking collective action for safety from Child Sexual Abuse.
Pledges and Appeals: The pledge and appeal for Child Safety was a key call to action for this campaign. 74 children appealed for Child Safety, 1,038 adults pledged directly, and 84,777 adults and children pledged for Child Safety through their organisation. Collectively, 85,894 pledges were taken and appeals were made in English, Hindi, Marathi, Sign Language and Spanish.
Watch the video of hearing-impaired children appeal during the Child Safety Week here.
Facebook Live Conversation: Child Safety Week 2019 focused on starting conversations and sharing resources and information through digital engagement. Through the week we focused on heightened engagement to drive the importance and urgency of the issue of Child Sexual Abuse further. We reached over 60,000 people with the help of our digital efforts.
We had enlightening conversations across social media channels on all days, especially on a Facebook Live conversation focused on Online Safety for children and adolescents which had a reach of over 64,397 people and engaged 8,000 unique users.
We had a 24-hour Tweetathon from 19th November 12 PM IST to 20th November 12 PM IST, with a Tweet chat on 19th evening. On Twitter, our hashtags #iStandForChildSafety had 208 users, 2000 Posts and an Engagement of 12,200 and the hashtag #ChildSafetyWeek had 191 Users, 2,100 Posts and an Engagement of 11,900.
Offline Engagement: There were community-led training, events, and other activities to start conversations in local communities about Child Sexual Abuse and Child Safety. It was heartening to see 102 Organisations including Government bodies, Corporates, Not for profits and Schools coming together from all over India to create awareness about the issue of Child Sexual Abuse. There continues to be engagement from different organisations on the issues of Child Safety and Personal Safety Education, even after the Child Safety Week.
The Child Safety Week ended on a celebratory note with Arpan being awarded for its Personal Safety Education Programme at the WISE Awards 2019. The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), recognizes and promotes six innovative projects that address global educational challenges, from across the world each year. The six winners were selected by the WISE Awards Jury after an independent assessment. The other 2019 WISE Awards winners included: Family Business for Education (Street Child) (UK/Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Liberia), United World Schools: Teaching the Unreached (UK/Cambodia, Nepal, and Myanmar), Micro:bit Educational Foundation (UK/Global), Programa Crianca Feliz (Brazil) and Akilah Institute (USA/Rwanda).
Watch Arpan receive the WISE Award 2019 here.
It was a proud moment that celebrated not just Arpan's work but also of all our partners who allowed us to work with them, our Board members and Advisors whose guidance has been critical and all our donors who've believed in this work and supported it continuously. But most importantly it celebrated all the thousands of children who trusted us, in their lives so that we could help them. Their resilience has been inspiring for all of us to see. They make us seem great and whilst we are warriors in the fight against Child Sexual Abuse, they are the real heroes who give us the hope and motivation to keep fighting this battle. May we continue to serve them with integrity and accountability.
Season's Greeting and wishing you the best for 2020!
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