With the number of crimes against children increasing by the day, the Ranchi district administration has started an initiative of training teachers to sensitise children and work with them on safe, unsafe touch, child sexual abuse and POCSO Act- Protection of Children from Sexual Offences.
In the first phase of the programme, 50 full time teachers and wardens across all the 13 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya’s have been trained in collaboration with World Vision India. The training programme for the trainers was held on February 8 and February 10 in the State capital.
The administration will hold another session for the trainers in the beginning of March where about 80 more teachers will be a part of it.
“This step is being by the district administration to initiate difficult conversations. Presently initiative will be carried out for children in all government schools because they are equally vulnerable and may have some issues which may never be brought up. An attempt is being made to ensure so that no child has to face unsafe touch because they don’t come to know about it,” said Ranchi Deputy Commissioner (DC) Rai Mahimapat Ray.
A recent tweet by the Ranchi DC also stated. “We took a pledge to stand against it, to voice against it, to empower children against it.”
In the initial phase the awareness is being created amongst students from class VI to class XII while the younger children will be trained in the later part of the project. The first round of training the adolescents will begin from March 11. By the third week of March, the project is targeted to train as many as 5,000 students within Ranchi on safe and unsafe touch.
The project is aimed to teach children on how to identify and differentiate between comfortable and uncomfortable or confused touch.
The training session will be conducted through sample activity books, videos and power point presentations. The students will also be given books related to the topic.
The major outcome of this programme is to create a better understanding of the situation and also initiate open conversations on the topic. The administration further plans to take this initiative to government and private schools also in the coming months.