Marking the safe space

The safeguarding training held in April was an activity that children would want to remember in the days to come.  It was the first of its kind where we had children from our three schools come to Sadili to learn how they can keep themselves safe. The activity which took half a day was both fun and an eye opener to the children as they came to realize how their own safety is in their hands.

After some warm up activities in the field, children gathered in the hall very anxious to learn about child safeguarding. The session had a whole range of different topics covering children’s rights, maintaining a safe space, how to say no and the circumstances under which the rights of the child may be abused. Among these were topics children were already familiar with such as the rights of the child. Also were topics that were very new to the children.

 Intriguing to the children was the discussion on online child protection which was new and yet very insightful. The discussion centered on the use of social media and the internet as the other avenue that perpetrators of child abuse have resorted to as a way of reaching out to these innocent ones. Surprising to note is that more than half of the participants present were interacting with the internet in various ways and most of them being ardent followers of face book and Instagram

It was indeed an eye opener to the children when it was brought to their attention the risks of accepting friend requests from strangers, sending them to strangers and joining strange online groups.

Grooming and sexting was explained to the children as ways in which they became easy targets to abusers. Children were able to understand the simple ways in which abusers use fake promises to entice children into cyber sex and ultimately into other forms of abuse. Very engaging with practical examples of what goes on in the social media platform; children were able to identify with these examples amid laughs, jeers and questions. This session was the epic of all the lessons learnt and with so much to discuss, time became a limiting factor.

At the end of the day children had a lot to carry home in view of the do’s and don’ts in making themselves safe, courageously saying No to perpetrators and taking time to report any dangers and risks they encounter in their lives. If children will have to forget anything they learnt from the session, safe online use is no doubt one of the areas they will not forget