Bengaluru: In a country where child protection as an issue goes largely unaddressed, a mobile application launched by UNICEF and Enfold Proactive Health Trust tries to empower young minds with information on personal safety.
“We have been doing this work from 2001, on personal safety and teaching kids. In every session we realise that parents cannot talk to their children about personal safety and what kind of touch is a ‘safe touch’. Actually it is simple to teach children, which made us launch this applicatiuon," says Dr. Sangeeta Saksena, Co-Founder, Enfold Proactive Health Trust.
The Surakshith App enables children who don’t have access to Body Safety Rules to learn about it. "There are children who do not have access to the internet and they probably just use a data pack for sometime. With this free application they can download information and look it up whenever they need to,” she adds. The application also offers age-appropriate stories for 6-18 year-olds, about Safe and Unsafe Touches, How to identify Safe Adults, and the ‘No-Go-Tell’ approach to Sexual Abuse. These stories have been created by Enfold to help children become alert to the perpetrator’s enticing approach, and help them realise that the blame and shame of the crime rests squarely with the abuser.
"Children learn better from stories. Hence we decided to use these stories which target different age groups and empower them with information," says Dr Saksena.
The Surakshith app also gives information on Internet Safety & amp; the Responsibilities of Digital Citizenship. It provides a quick and easy access to culturally appropriate, comprehensive information on Personal Safety for children, tried and tested by Enfold over its 15 years of experience in working with over one lakh twenty thousand children.
"Parents can comfortably take their young children through this app, or let the children explore the app on their own as the language is simple and non-threatening. The user getting more familiar with the concept of personal safety, this knowledge can get transformed into instinctive behaviour," she sums up.
The free app can be downloaded in eleven languages. Any hand-held device can be used to download this app on Google Play Store or the link given can be used.
