Preda Foundation continues preventive education to protect children.

Preda Foundation continues preventive education to protect children.

The Preda Foundation preventive education program is moving ahead once again with greater reach once again with the relaxation of the protocols restricting public meetings. The seminars for the people have continued in remote villages but now will be implemented in the Barangays with public meetings approved by the authorities.
The purpose of the seminars presented with visual aids is to raise awareness of the public, especially the poorest of the poor so that they come to know the rights of the child and their responsibilities to protect and report child abuse and how to get help.

The topics that will be presented include children’s rights and responsibilities, women’s rights and protection, and law-mandated protocols for reporting cases of abuse and exploitation. It shall also cover discussion on the salient provisions of new laws for children including the Anti-Child BrideAct, the Law Increasing the Age of Sexual Consent, Safe Spaces Act and the Inclusive Education Act.

This is of vital importance at this time because of the prevailing situation in the country where 8 in 10 Filipino children suffered some form of violence in their lifetime (Council for the Welfare of Children and UNICEF, 2016); 1 in 4 Filipino women experienced physical, emotional or sexual violence by their husband or partner (Philippine Statistics Authority, 2017); the Philippines ranking no. 12th among countries with the highest incidence of modern-day slavery in the entire Asia Pacific with more than 700,000 cases of trafficking annually (Global Slavery Index, 2018); and the country being dubbed as the global epicenter of the live-stream sexual abuse trade where 1 in every 5 Filipino children are vulnerable to online sexual exploitation (Unicef, 2016).

The same situation is validated by the data collected by the Preda Therapeutic Home for Girls project for the year 2021 where the majority of the supported 96 child survivors of sexual abuse, rape and acts of lasciviousness have family members as their abusers. Among the perpetrators are 20 biological fathers, 6 grandfathers, 5 male cousins, 4 brothers, 3 uncles, 3 live-in partners of the mother or stepfathers, and 3 mothers (for trafficking their own children). Furthermore, there were also perpetrators who are non-related to the children including 9 male neighbors, 7 close friends, 5 family friends, and 1 son-in-law of foster parents of the child, and 1 American pedophile. Even duty-bearers are also child abusers and this includes perpetrators such as 1 Barangay captain, 1 BarangayKagawad, and 1 teacher. On the other hand, all the 36 girls who were victims of trafficking identified their peers or common acquaintance who enticed them into prostitution.

The situation is further aggravated due to the pandemic. But while COVID remains a threat, the pandemic of gender-based violence is more alarming. There is indeed an urgent demand to strengthen community-based interventions for the prevention of gender-based violence against women and girls.

Preda will continue this work since true knowledge is the power to change society, to persuade people to act in a just-right way to stop rights violations, prevent abuse, and to get justice for child victims.

Everyone is encouraged to support this work in their own community in every way they can by sharing this article and reporting any incident of child abuse to the authorities and copied to [email protected].

Preda team.