A Series of Trainings for Teachers Under the Framework of the “Safe Streets for Everyone” Campaign

To Protect our Children from Sexual Harassment a Series of Trainings for Teachers under the Framework of the “Safe Streets for Everyone” Campaign

In order to protect our children from sexual harassment and to raise awareness in schools of teachers and parents, ECWR held its first training for teachers on September 12- 22, 2012 for 39 male and female teachers from 14 schools.

ECWR sees the need to work through the “Safe Streets for Everyone” campaign in schools to educate new generations on the necessity of good morals in society and mutual respect for others. Our trainings focused on the reasons for sexual harassment in Egyptian society and ways to confront it effectively, as past ECWR studies have revealed shocking data related to the vulnerability of children towards sexual harassment. ECWR decided to train a large number of teachers from the Educational Administration of North Giza to be an important tool in raising awareness among students. These efforts aim at training most schools within the North Giza Administration, which will help in transforming schools into safe spaces without sexual harassment. Additionally, ECWR could work together to create a generation that has awareness of the consequences of this phenomenon in school and in society at large.

For two days, the teachers recognized, through ten sessions and workshops, the “Safe Streets for Everyone” campaign, the concept of sexual harassment, the reasons of this phenomenon, and the definition of sexual abuse of children, which can range from any provocation that occurs deliberately towards a male/ female child and can include explicit scenes, sexual or naked photos, or sexual movies at any age. The training also addressed other subjects that were discussed in details, such as the reasons of sexual harassment of children, symptoms of sexual harassment, the role and different ways of raising awareness to protect children from sexual harassment, how to deal with the victims of sexual harassment and integrate them in society, and the ways of preventing sexual harassment in the future.

In the end of the training, the teachers worked together to develop a strategy of raising awareness for each distinctive school. These strategies will be applied in the future, and through community participation of civil society, ECWR will provide support to teachers to raise awareness among students and their parents in order to contribute in making our school safe from sexual harassment.