It was a casual discussion on the road trip back from Lavasa, with Monika that had the germ of this idea crop up. Children were getting abused all around us, by folks know to the families, by unknown people, by older children, it seemed that nothing had changed since the time we were children and had ALL gone through our own personal demons, laid them to rest, and got on with our lives. Something needed to be done. Parents needed to be made more aware, more likely to teach their children how to be on their guard, more likely to confront their children’s abusers rather than sweep it under the carpet as we had been used to all through our childhood when the non confrontational route was adopted by parents, where we were made to feel in some way, that it was all our fault, leading to, at least in my case, an eating disorder and a life long battle with weight issues and a distrust of the male species, which thankfully the spouse managed to break through.
This is what we decided to do for April, to spread the word, make parents aware, and help them teach their children to be empowered, to know, to say NO and to come tell them.
Across the month of April 2011, over 40 bloggers in the blogosphere will come together to post on various aspects of Child Sexual Abuse in a bid to create awareness about an issue which affects over 50 per cent of children. This, the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month April 2011, will run across their blogs as well as the CSA blog, which is here.
In addition to these posts, the CSAAM blog will feature survivor stories, posts by experts and NGOs working in these fields. Through this concerted effort we hope to bring Child Sexual Abuse out of the closet and teach parents how to educate their children about predators, preventing their children from being abused and knowing how to deal with such a situation should it occur. Our children deserve a safe and happy childhood.
If you would like to add to the discussion or know somebody else who would, please note that we welcome entries
* mailed to csa.awareness.april@gmail.com OR
* posted as FB notes and linked to Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month Page OR
* posted on your own blog with the badge and linked to the main blog OR
* linked or posted on Twitter tagged twitter.com/CSAAwareness OR
The list of topics is available here. Anonymous contributions are accepted and requests for anonymity will of course be honoured.
Guest posts are welcome at the CSAAM blog.
Please remember to send in a mail with all necessary links or just your input to csa.awareness.april@gmail.com so that we can track your contribution and make sure that it is not inadvertently lost or something.
You can also support it simply by adding our the logo of the initiative in your blog’s sidebar. Grab the below code to do so
Come join us. Keep your children safe.
excellent idea K. But i wish there was a way to disseminate this awareness via language media.. If some of the blog posts and other contributions in english could perhaps be translated and published in regional language newspapers and websites for non-english reading folks? you have bloggers from various regional backgrounds and many of them may be sufficiently bilingual to translate their material. I’m sure regional language newspaper editors could be convinced to offer you some space for a worthy cause like this one. Great initiative.
for some reason the CSAAM website is not opening up for me. this is such an important cause and i applaud you and your friends for starting this campaign. You also made me write about my own awful experience.
http://sukanyabora.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/child-sexual-abuse-awareness-month-april-2011/
so THANK YOU!!!!!!
It’s a great initiative and I applaud you for it. I have written a post on my blog about child abuse, you can read it at sulekkha.blogspot.com
Kiran..the blog bagde has been added. hope you can crosslink now. let me know if doesnt work. Thanks again for taking this on… I have only admiration and respect for you, Monika and others who are spearheading this initiative.
Great initiative, Kudos to you and Monika for doing this.
The link to the blog is wrong, please fix it. It has an “a” after c.
Hi Kiran,
Great initiative by you and Monika. Have put it up on my blog as well to spread the word.
Paroma
This is a great initiative and perhaps should go on past the month….I’ve grabbed the badge – thanks.
I AM a bollywood movie releasing in India on 29th April is based on child abuse to know more facebook.com/iamthefilms …. It is Your Story!!!!
Hi Kiran,
Read your arcticle in sunday times yesterday.It was very nice. Kudos to all you people for taking a very nice initiative to tackle the problem of Child Sexual Abuse.
Deven
Hey all, thanks a tonne.