Protect Them B4 Abuse Begins: Students ages 5-17

When we started Not Guilty for Family Development in Egypt we did not know the many failures we would be facing.

I thought that everyone we approach, will welcome fighting sexual abuse since it is rampant in our country.

Our vision was to work with students, teachers and parents to close the circle on the abuser.

Yet, as we approached schools with our program, which contains puppets, songs, coloring, good touch, bad touch, private parts, choosing safe persons, how to defend ourselves we were not prepared for one failure after another. When we approached the schools, they somehow thought we were accusing them of something. They always felt the need to defend themselves that they had no such cases; that they did not want to open the kids’ eyes with such information.

And yet, we always found cases; in every class we entered there were at least 15% of the class that have already been sexually abused.

Our dream to enter into public schools with a whole curriculum that will change behavior rather than just raise awareness, was shattered- for a while- when we met with the Vice Minister of education during the reign of Morsy. “You should hide those curricula; you are promoting obscenity”. I answered, “We are preventing obscenity”. We left his office, feeling we have failed in our mission, yet thinking about it more, we thought this would be a good time to perfect the curriculum and try it out in private schools.

The success we saw in the schools we entered, was always, in the back of my mind overshadowed with the failure at the ministry of education.

Then, I started taking an e-course with World Bank. And in it I learned about adaptive leadership.

Then, it dawned on me: if the word anti sexual abuse makes people flinch, then I will call it an anti bullying, anti violence curriculum.

All doors opened: the doors of the ministry of education and the doors of the schools.

Failure remains failure only if we sit in it and lose hope.

Dr. Laila Risgallah PhD

Not Guilty for Family Development

Founder and President

Ashoka Fellow

laila@gheirmozneb.tv

www.gheirmozneb.tv

4 Abdel Rahman El Rafei St., Heliopolis, Cairo

Tel.:  (002)-02-21804426 or (002)-02-21805226 or 01008744064

Facebook  Not Guilty

Twitter: @gheirmozneb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBJFrw_kb50 

  Vision:

We dream of a Middle East free of sexual abuse for every child, woman and man.

Mission:

Empowering child, family and society with knowledge about sexual abuse and with methods of protection and refusal through training, education, media and support programs.