281 civic schools to get boards with messages on self-defence

A national study on child abuse, released by the Centre, showed that 53.22 per cent of children, including boys and girls, reported being sexually victimised. And often, the complaints were ignored or trivialised due to denial, caused by discomfort and ignorance. 

Since schools are the frontline of child protection, where a large part of the kid’s waking hours is spent, there is a chance to teach protective behaviour to a large number of children. An NGO, Tulir – Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, has developed and installed personal safety awareness boards in all the 281 schools managed by the Greater Chennai Corporation.

The messages on these boards (in English and Tamil) are non-threatening and age-appropriate, with easy-to-remember rules for personal safety. This year’s theme highlights on bullying. Due to changing lifestyles and varied opportunities, children and youngsters are required to be far more inter-personally engaged with others outside their immediate circle. This mandates a necessity to ensure that the children can discern between exploitative and interactions. These boards equip children to recognise and seek assistance if they are victims of bullying or if they notice themselves as perpetrators. 

The boards ensure that the message is communicated in a non-threatening manner, with age-appropriate, easy-to-remember personal safety rules. Tulir has been collaborating with the Corporation for the last 10 years, to ensure the students’ safety. 

According to Tulir, “An institution’s integrity and worth is not based on whether cases of violence and abuse exist. Instead an institution’s integrity is based on the acceptance of the possibilities of violence being inflicted on children in its care and taking proactive steps to respond in a timely and appropriate way to ensure that its children may benefit from its caring and foresight to truly have the right to be safe all the time.”