School is still out but over the next week 200 high school teachers
will return to the classroom. The school counselors and life skills teachers
will participate in one day workshops on the commercial sexual exploitation
and abuse of children and adolescents in Belize. The participants will be equipped
with the skills to detect and deal with victims. The Youth Enhancement Services,
YES, is facilitating the workshops and youth coordinator Maggie Patchett says
teachers play a key role in identifying and eliminating commercial sexual exploitation
and abuse.
Maggie Patchett, Youth Advisor – YES
“Teachers are some of the people who have the most contact with children
outside of the family and therefore they are the ones who can recognize any
changes in the child or in an adolescent that may be as a result of commercial
sexual exploitation and therefore can help and support the child as well as
going through the reporting process.
What we are hoping is that we can really emphasize the fact that the children
who are involved in this are victims of commercial sexual exploitation. What
they need is help and our support and we can work with the legal side of it
in chasing down the criminals but what we need to do is try and make a difference
in the lives of these children so that they are no longer involved in commercial
sexual exploitation. What we find through some of the pilot projects that we
have been doing at YES is that by providing the support and the encouragement
for the children and the young people, but also for their families, that that
really makes a difference to the children being able to get themselves out of
that situation.
A lot of the commercial sexual exploitation here in this country has to
do with the sugar daddy syndrome and it is become culturally accepted and socially
tolerated, that this is behaviour that happens here. However that doesn’t
make it right and what we are trying to do at YES is really raise the awareness
of the problem, raise the awareness that this is a violation of the children’s
rights and that we have to really change the attitudes of people here. We have
to do something to protect our children.
What we need to do is change attitudes. It is going to take a long time,
it is going to take hard work but we have to start somewhere and if we can change
the life for one child, then it is going to make a difference.”
The workshops continue through to Friday for high schools in the north
and central regions of the country. A final workshop will be held in Dangriga
on Monday for high schools in the south.
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