Friday, May 21, 2010
Istianah's e-learning assignment
ECPAT international is a global network of organisations and individuals working together to eliminate child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes. It seeks to encourage the world community to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights free and secure from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation. It has more than 81 members in 73 member countries working together to fight for the rights of the children.
One of the many programmes that it has implemented is the Youth Partnership Programme for child survivors of commercial sexual exploitation in South Asia (YPP). This programme is an innovative initiative designed to empower and build the capacity of experiential youth to take the lead in the fight against commercial sexual exploitation of children. (CSEC).The countries involved in this programme are India, Nepal and Bangladesh. These 3 countries are more prone to CSEC because of the fact that they are developing countries. Children are either tricked into it or even sold by their parents due to the difficulties that they face. Many children are tricked and trafficked to other countries and to stop this, peer support programmes are held in high risk areas so as to educate fellow peers from being tricked. Also, youth trained in advocacy and media skills reach out to local communities to raise the awareness of CSEC. One of the challenges that ECPAT face is the size of the regions. There might be places that they cannot reach to and CSEC can happen at these places without them knowing. Also, using youth as advocates might not really convince the local communities as they are not figures of authorities. For example, if a family is really too poor and is pressurised to sell or send off their children, they will still do it anyway. The youths will not be able to do much. One of the organisations involved is Aparajeyo Bangladesh. Its goal was to reduce their unbearable poverty, distress and vulnerability caused by the harshness of slum life. One of the vulnerability is CSEC. Aparajeyo empower the youths from a state of helplessness and because of the demand for change by the youths, they have impacted lives of child survivors of CSEC, local communities and schools among many. These youths have helped in 1 of the goals of the organisation that is to reduce the vulnerability of the children. By rescuing children and preventing them from being entrapped in CSEC, they are a step closer fulfil 2 of the MDG goals: fighting poverty and educating children. It is a rippling effect whereby they can fulfil more MDG goals when one of the goals (reduce vulnerability of children) are fulfilled. Their partnership has proved to be fruitful as victim’s self-esteems are increased and they are slowly beginning to reintegrate back to the society. Also, the communities are more aware of CSEC and won’t be trapped into the cycle. So far, the programme has worked well as it has impacted lives of children in the 3 countries. However, more can be done to stop CSEC from happening in rural, unreachable areas where parents and children are more naïve. They can stretch their resources to more places and not only to high risk areas. Other than youth advocates implementing programmes to educate the local communities on awareness, they can also come up with programmes to encourage families to improve on their income. One example would be to team up with organisations that can offer financial assistance to empower residents to start their own businesses and expand on their skills and eventually improve on their standard of living.
We Loved10:32 AM
April 2008 past