REACH OUT FOR AWARENESS AND PREVENTION OF CSA
By Lalrengpuii
Background
I carried out activity five of our virtual volunteer programme in my hometown Lawngtlai, Mizoram. The state is in total lockdown for further two weeks, thus with strict social-distancing laws the methodology that I adopted was telephonic conversation based on the interview approach. My reach out was self- administered.
Respondents
My respondents were limited to my family members and few from my peer group. The respondents as mentioned in the instructions provided were divided into three groups that is Young children (my cousins having the age above 6 years and below 10 years old), older children (my cousins having the age above 10 years and below 18 years) and adults (above age 18 consisting of my peer group and my relatives).
Preparation
Prior to the telephonic conversion I had done some arrangements that is for young children I had sent them the link of the komal video on CSA along with some materials from our CSA handbook. For the older children I had also sent them the link of some material from CSA handbook along with video link of the Nobel peace prize acceptance speech of Mr. Kailash Satyarthi. For the adults I requested them to watch the price of free and also shared some valuable articles from our blog. After three days it felt really good to get a good response from most of my respondents. I had also prepared a list of questions that I would ask exclusively to the adult group. The basic framework was based on the idea of Talk, Educate and Reflect.
Important take-away
I was able to educate and aware thirty-eight respondents of mine that followed my prior instructions and were respondents in my telephonic conversation.
Feedback
The feedback exceeded my expectations, I found the older set of children the most responsive and their feedback mainly revolved along lines of knowing about the misuse of social media and their curiosity about the laws for prevention of child sexual abuse. Few of them raised the question that why this wasn’t taught to them in their respective schools and will ask their teacher about it. The younger set of children were more fascinated by the videos and materials and it was tough to make them aware about prevention of child sexual abuse by the telephonic medium, but after few attempts they also learnt about it and promised to spread the message once they go back to school. The feedback from the adult age group were optimistic with various concerns about protecting children online and how to communicate to children more effectively and compassionately om such matters.
Major challenges
I faced two major challenges the first was the language problem as some parts of price of free were in Hindi and my respondents were mainly English or Mizo speaker. The second challenge that I faced was the limitations of the medium of telephonic conversation that was a major hurdle to create awareness for the younger children.
Conclusion
This activity helped me gain experience for future reach out programmes that will aim towards a bigger circle of respondents that can be made aware about the prevention of child sexual abuse. It also helped in the personal front as it gave me confidence and courage to further take such awareness programmes without any fear to talk more, educate more and aware more against child sexual abuse.
