07th September, 2021 (10:00 am- 1:00 pm)

“STOP!! Child Sexual Abuse; it kills Childhood”

The session on understanding child sexual abuse and personal safety Education programme was organized by the faculty member Dr. Joan Lopes and the resource people were Mr. Akash and Mr. Amey from Arpan NGO. It was an online session held on the Zoom App from 10:00 am- 01:00 pm. Mr. Amey began the session by welcoming all the students and showing the schedule of what topics will be covered in the two days. He started by talking about the United Nations Convention on Rights of Children (UNCRC). The rights are divided into four points

(1) Right to survive (2) Right to development (3) Right to participation and (4) Right to protection.

He explained the meaning of grooming in child sexual abuse; that is it is a process by which an abuser develops a sexual relationship with a child by gaining their trust; it happens both on “online and offline” platform. Visible signs of child sexual abuse were given i.e. behavioural, physical, sexual, psychological and also said those are just the indicators, unless the child tells, there is no sure way to determine. Mr. Amey then threw light on how child sexual abuse has an impact on the child as they grow into adults. The major components of the POCSO act (Protection of child sexual offence) were given.

The major offences covered in the POCSO act were shown. He then spread awareness on how we can help victims of child sexual abuse by knowing whom to report about the abuse. How we can be a difference if the child tells us, points on this were given. Different tips on facilitating online adult awareness sessions were also given. The resources available at Arpan NGO were told about and a copyright clause was also shown. Later at 12:40 pm Mr. Akash Ahire began with the breathing activity to refresh the students minds. He then began by speaking about the Personal Safety Education (PSE) programme, the components and implementation process of the same were given. He said instead of saying “good and bad touch” we need to say “safe and unsafe touch”. PSE cannot be taught to young kids as it will harm their innocence.

The session for Day 2 started on 8th September at 10:00 am- 1:00 pm Ms Seyana Pereira conducted the prayer and Ms Slavi Pereira offered the vote of thanks to Arpan Foundation and their members. The day began with the implementation process of the PSE Programme, how they conduct those Pre PSE sessions with parents and conduct E-learning sessions with children were told. Arpan Resources also offers Personal Safety Education Programme for children offline. Lesson plan based for 4 to 6 hours from 1st to 10th grade over a duration for 4 -6 hours. Story based activity is conducted with children for 2 hours from 1st to 10th grade over a duration of 12 hours. They also gave us the insight about their programmes and resources which includes E-learning program, Safety Book (arpanelearn.com), E-learn module this module has been approved by the Ministry of Education and is available on Diksha. We learnt about the safety of private body parts, safe and unsafe touches and how does a child starts sharing about their sexual abuse experience. For the E-learning sessions the child is given a separate device: a computer setup to start the program, project the screen as well as be able to see the trainers screen. The best practices for adults to keep children safe is understanding the technology, communicating on online safety and setting ground rules. The session came to an end with an activity of PSE lessons and how will we tackle the above queries.

Ms. Seyana Pereira 32, FYBEd
Ms. Slavi Pereira 33, FYBEd