By Dr. Laila Risgallah Wahba | Project Leader
Training in the nursery Happy Kids (Al Obour City on Wednesday, the 7th of May 2019)
Our team was composed by Mary (Head of Projects), Marianne (Assistant Head of Projects), Germaine (coordinator), Lisa (trainer), Johnny (photographer) and Naomi (intern/volunteer).
We had to train about forty children and seven teachers of the nursery. The children were separated in two different groups according to their age.
The first one was a baby class kids (three and a half years old) and four teachers were with them and in the second group, the children were older (four or five years old) and there were five teachers with them, in which two of them were already in the first group. Each training lasted an hour.
The nursery Happy Kids is situated in C class neighborhood. Since Al Obour City is a new industrial city, most of the mothers and the fathers of the children work in factories.
The training with the first group started and Farah (Germaine) greeted the children at the door. Most of them were excited, except one boy who cried and didn’t want to greet Farah. The teachers explained that he always cried when he left a classroom. When all the kids had arrived, Lisa presented herself in a dynamic way and she played a game that the kids enjoyed and they started to cooperate. Then we turned the Not Guilty song on and Farah joined Lisa in front of the children to sing and do the dance with her.
(At first, the children didn’t sing nor did the gestures with Farah and Lisa, but with the music going on they started imitating Farah and Lisa). When the music was finished, Lisa took the big hand and showed the kids the private parts: where other people couldn’t touch them (the mouth, the chest, the buttocks and the genital area).
Then she gave them a mirror box and they had to see what was in it. In the mirror box they saw themselves and Lisa told them that they are very precious because God created them and he loves them.
After they all saw what was in the box, we gave each kids one red and one green flag. Lisa presented situations with good and bad touches and the children had to raise one or the other flag to say if the situation was good or bad. The red one was for “no” and the green one for “yes”. The children gladly took part in the game and enjoyed it.
At the end of the training, a child could go in the front and Lisa would ask him what his/ her reaction would be if someone tried to touch his or her mouth, chest, buttocks or genital area and the child had to shout “no” and run in the other direction.
In the second group, the program was pretty much the same, but Lisa played another game with a houla hoop. The houla hoop represents our boundaries. It shows who can get into our circle and who can’t. It’s our personal space and if someone crosses the boundaries it is bad.
The other game was the traffic lights. It shows the four steps the children need to take if they are about to be abused or bullied (stop, run, tell, tell). During the whole training session, the group was pretty agitated and noisy.
After each of the two trainings, Johnny took some pictures of the children, with the teacher and our team and after the second training he made some videos of the teachers talking to Germaine.
Finally, we had a talk with the school director.
Stories the kids told
Several kids of this group shared their experience.
1) One girl (Marly) said that once, her friend (boy) hugged her really tight, but she didn’t like it, so she told her mother.
èWe told her she was right and that it is good she told someone older than her. If that would happen again she has to say “no” each time.
2) Another girl said that her mother forces her to take showers with her sister, but the girl doesn’t like it, so she told her mother. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t listen and she keeps on showering the two sisters together.
èWe told the nursery to call her mother and to advice her, because the daughter doesn’t like it.
3) Another girl said that her mother, a teacher among the nursery, usually kisses her on the mouth. After the session, the mother wanted to kiss her daughter on the mouth to see if she had remembered what we had said during the session and the daughter said that she didn’t want to because she had learned it in the session.
èWe told the child it was very good to refuse to kiss her mother on the mouth and we adviced the mother (teacher) not to do this again because it is not good for her child.
4) A child told us that when he goes back home he undresses his dolls and plays with them. He also said that he undresses his baby brother/sister and plays the doctor game with him/her while the baby is naked.
èWe told him that only the parents could undress his baby brother/sister and that he wasn’t a doctor. The doctor could undress a child only if the parents are in the room.
On our way back, in the Uber, Germaine and Marianne had an interesting conversation with the driver. When he saw their t-shirts he asked what job they were doing. They answered and explained them what Not Guilty was doing (sessions for kids and adults in everywhere to teach them how to protect themselves against sexual abuse). He was wondering how he could tell his two children about private parts and sexuality. Germaine answered that it is good if he talks about sex honestly and in good way with his children. She also said that if children don’t learn about sexuality from their parents, they will learn it from other sources and these might be bad. She added that it is not a problem to talk about sex with your children, but that it is better if a father talks to his son and a mother to her daughter.
If you want to learn more buy the book What Happens AFter #MeToo- Tackling The Iceberg available on amazon and kindle.
If yu want to book a training or a speaking engagement send to contact@notguiltyinc.org
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