No more Child Sexual Abuse. Ab Bas!

by | Mar 9, 2017

Contributed by: Anjali Singh
Dated: January 14, 2017

Childhood is a part of life that creates beautiful memories and these memories can never be taken away.  Nobody likes to get flashbacks from things they don’t want to remember. These memories play a significant role in developing one’s personality. Once a nightmare, always the fear…

Through Project KHEL’s programme Ab Bas!, I got the opportunity to share and talk about Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), a topic which people or kids don’t usually talk about because it is considered shameful. Taking sessions on such a controversial topic was a big deal in the starting and honestly speaking, I never thought this could ever be my cup of tea. Initially, even I wasn’t very comfortable with this topic because that’s how I was brought up, staying shush about our private parts or anything related. Gradually, due to the immense efforts of my team, I could actually take up these sessions. My experience of this whole phase made me come face to face with reality. I was talking about things I never thought of and I came to know how excruciating it must be to carry such memories around with no one to talk about them.

Our approach is preventive in nature and the most important thing that we do in our sessions is to make the environment comfortable for the kids so that they get rid of their inhibitions and open themselves up to learning. The motive is to make the kids learn about the following points:

  1. Their private parts (name, hygiene, sense of security towards it)
  2. Types of touches i.e. safe, unsafe and accidental touch.
  3. Their body belongs to themselves.
  4. Sexual abuse is not to be kept a secret and to there is nothing to be ashamed of.
  5. They have to share it with someone they trust.

These are few points on which we focus a lot. For kids, it is very important to know that not everybody is allowed to touch them. We, as kids, were very unaware of the touches and our private parts. But it is really rewarding to expound kids about the same and knowing that it could aid them in future and in protecting themselves from harm.

CSA sessions of Project KHEL have proved to be extremely constructive for the kids. We have done sessions with different age groups and different levels of society but the skepticism regarding this issue is at the same page. We, as adults need to deal with this sensitive issue in a spirited manner and the first step is of course to acknowledge it.

I am so grateful to be a part of an organization like Project KHEL that is doing its best to bring about the change by educating children about their bodies and helping them judge the safe touch from the unsafe ones and the accidental ones.