Talking is Teaching

In today’s busy world, most of us, as individuals prioritize ourselves over others. We constantly are trying to update ourselves in line with trends. But there are a lot of others who aren’t even aware of the daily happenings. It is our social responsibility to help them modernize and keep them up to speed.

In our day to day lives we somewhere or the other hear about children being victims of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Each child irrespective of their gender needs awareness about child abuse. I took an initiative to conduct awareness programs for the underprivileged concerning this. I reached out to iVolunteer through my school and they referred me to “Arunodhaya Centre for Street and working children” a successful NGO. They organized and assisted in conducting awareness sessions in Greater Chennai corporation schools and in community level.  The sessions were communicated through simple and easily understandable powerpoint presentation. It included contents of general knowledge, types of touch, types of alerts, types of safety, etc. It also included contents of how to protect ourselves in unsafe situations. It was very interactive and an eye-opening session for the children and for me as well. I was astonished, yet happy to notice that few students already were aware about safe and unsafe touch, but they required knowledge on ways to tackle unsafe and abusive situations. I had the privilege to make the children realize that this is not something to laugh about but something to think about.

Till date, these sessions were conducted in Greater Chennai Corporation schools reaching out 345 students and one community program for 80 children from primary and middle school children. Moving forward, my main motive is to bring awareness among children and help them protect themselves from all kinds of abuse. I felt that the children would be more comfortable interacting and understanding this topic if it was communicated by a young adult who is also a child. I feel really grateful to have had this incredible opportunity. I aspire to do more such awareness programs and services to this society. Let us all unitedly fight against this terrible social issue.