MARGAO: The Goa State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (GSCPCR) launched one of the largest training of trainers – Personal Safety Education (PSE) programme on the prevention of Child Sexual Abuse along with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and Arpan, an award-winning organisation working for prevention of child sexual abuse in India.
The programme, which began on Monday, will go on until August 12, and will cover all 12 talukas with 3,244 teachers from across Goa participating in this first phase.
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The launch was held at the hall of the Directorate of Agriculture in the presence of Jaspal Singh, IPS, Director General of Police; Judge Sayonara Laad Telles, President of Children’s Court of Goa; Adv Poonam Bharne, Director of Prosecution and Sindhu Prabhudessai, Assistant Director, Directorate of Education.
The training is aimed at empowering teachers with the knowledge of child and child rights, types of child abuse and child sexual abuse, statistics, short-term and long-term consequences of child sexual abuse, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act), and its underlying provisions.
“This will help them acquire skills and techniques that need to be demonstrated while handling various types of disclosures and cases of child sexual abuse. They will be further able to conduct sessions on this issue within their respective setups and contribute toward creating a safe environment for children,” said Peter Borges, GSCPCR Chairperson while giving an overview of the programme.
Arpan’s resource persons namely Rehea Quadros, Suvidha Gaikwad, Shubhangi Shinde, Amey Korgaonkar, Rasika Shirsat, Shraddha Jadhav, Akash Ahire, Kusum Naik, Sayali Jadhav, Anushka Bhat, Jefina Thomas and Milind Murudkar will facilitate the training session and ensure the smooth implementation of the programme.
“Given the growing number of child sexual abuse cases across the State and the lack of awareness among children, the Commission will now work on strengthening guidance to teachers and providing more support for schools to tackle it, with support from Arpan,” Borges added.
“Teachers and school leaders will be better supported to recognise sexual harassment and abuse and teach confidently about issues of consent, online abuse and healthy relationships. The most fundamental responsibility that education settings have is to keep children safe. There needs to be a clear focus on preventing abuse from happening in the first place, as well as providing timely and sensitive support to those affected,” Borges added further.
