Mangaluru: To mark the first anniversary of Project Angel, a massive human chain was formed in the city by students of various institutions here, on September 16.
Students from more than 40 schools participated in the programme. The Executive director of the Inchara Foundation and founder of project ‘Angel’, Preetham Rodrigues, speaking to Mangalorean.com said that more than 7000 students were trained to mark the first anniversary of Project Angel.
He also said, “Prevention is better than cure; instead of protesting for every reason, we thought of creating awareness among the students. This is an initiative to promote awareness and encourage preventive action against child sexual abuse. The project aims to conduct sessions to sensitize children, parents, guardians, teachers and the community on recognizing the warning signs of abuse, differentiating good touch and bad touch and to train them on how to respond and act when they suspect a child is being victimized.”
He also said that most of the parents are not ready to come forward if their child has been abused. The best way to reach the parents is through schools. We insist all schools to include us in one of their PTA meetings. If there is verbal abuse, we transfer such cases to the District Child Protection unit and Childline. We have also planned to start counselling centres and helpline number, and online chat for those who fear to come forward.
Deputy commissioner A B Ibrahim inaugurated the Jatha in front of the DC office.
