This week...
Posted by Amanda , Sunday, January 24, 2010 12:31 PM
Speaker: Cristina and Karen Moran
Topic: Child Abuse and Child Protection Policy
Summary of the Week:
Thoughts:
I think it was so helpful to learn how to identify signs of abuse. I know in the future I will use this information and it’s important to be aware of. Also, I think it’s really useful to think of the different ways you can deal with the situations and how to report them. We were informed of some crazy statistics, such as:
There are 12 million children in forced labor
5.7 million children in slavery
1.8 million children in prostitution/child pornography
And 1.2 million victims of human trade
And this is all just in Latin America/the Caribbean alone. The craziest part of all this is that these kids are “protected” under the Convention of the Rights of the Child and should never be a part of any of this, yet it still happens.
This week was great because it was a lot of practical information and they also gave us ways to use it. We had a couple times of role-playing just to figure out how to best deal with situations and who you should go to first in cases where you suspect child abuse. It made it more realistic and I felt I really learned a lot from these exercises. It’s also cool because one of our teachers was telling us how they have taught children these different ways of dealing with abuse and seeing the signs, and they are now helping other children and bringing awareness about child abuse.
One thing that’s been on my mind all week concerning child abuse is just how easily it becomes a cycle and how to prevent that cycle from repeating itself. We need to step in and help restore the child, but what about the others? What about the abusers? I feel like it just keeps coming back to the same question: How can we teach others to value human life? How can we teach people that children are precious and important?
Child abuse is an injustice that should not be happening in this world. Our children should be empowered to grow and explore. They have a capacity to give, teach, spread love and we should never take those things away from them. When child abuse happens, it’s someone saying that a child is not important, that they are not made in the image of God. How can help people understand how beautiful, precious and full of purpose these children are? That’s what I want to do.
you are learning a lot... thanks for asking vital questions