Porcospini/Hedgehogs – Empowering children and families against sexual abuse and violence
Lead partner institution: Specchio Magico Cooperativa Sociale Onlus (Lecco)
Program and Call for Proposals: Daphne – Call for proposals 2010
The “Porcospini” project is aimed at children and parents, and its scope is to create and develop good practices at European level for primary prevention in the field of child sexual abuse. The objective is to define a strategic management of situations at risk that focuses its attention on the most vulnerable and exposed, such as children. The project aims to identify and share strategies and tools to prevent child abuse. This will be achieved by teaching children how to avoid risks and dangers, how to recognize situations at risk based on their emotional and sexual awareness and, above all, who to avoid in order to ensure their own safety. Therefore, the project promotes an approach aimed at preventing sexual abuse rather than assisting victims of sexual abuse.
Objectives
– Provide children with the specific tools they need to understand the context in which they find themselves and to feel comfortable if they ask particular questions or if they want to deepen various aspects of their growth;
– helping children to develop critical skills so that they can recognise and react to potentially dangerous or risky situations. Proper behaviour will help prevent children from becoming victims of abuse.
The project aims to provide children with the necessary tools to develop a deeper awareness of their body and emotions. This will be achieved by teaching them to recognize and listen to their feelings, as well as to trust the feelings themselves. In addition, another objective of the project is to help the children recognize which adults are trustworthy and to turn to them for help or to tell positive or negative experiences without fear of being reprimanded or misunderstood.
Actions
The project is supported by six partners. They have the social and educational resources and competences necessary to integrate the project results into local action plans and policies, as well as into their local partners. Taken together, these partners are a perfect combination of skills and appropriate structures to make communication and dialogue within families easier. This will be achieved with the help of the schools, bringing together school and family in the most sensitive and respectful way possible.
In addition to carrying out a context analysis that will serve to define the models and procedures of the programmes for the prevention of child abuse and the creation of the necessary tools, the main activities of the project are the training sessions in which the children of the schools involved are involved.
Working together in a transnational cooperation project and evaluating the project at European level, the partners will also have the opportunity to define an innovative and shared European model regarding the prevention of child abuse.
Partnership
Lead Partner: Specchio Magico Cooperativa Sociale Onlus (IT)
PP 1: RETESALUTE Azienda Speciale consortile (IT)
PP 2: Southwark Council (UK)
PP 3: Foundation MUNDELNINO/MNO-ITW (NL)
PP 4: Asociación Centro Andaluz de Programas Europeos – ACOEP (ES)
PP 5: Education, n. o. (SK)
Duration
The project lasted 24 months, from 01/01/2011 to 01/01/2013
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