Staff Blog

A group of women sit side by side on the floor of a small shelter eager to learn more about child abuse and how they can stop it in their communities… These women (and 1 man) are home-based care workers (HBCs) from many villages who were attending our workshop on child abuse last week. Home-based care workers are chosen in each village to help care for the critically ill in their village as it isn’t always easy to travel to the clinic every time one is sick. They not only provide basic medicine and first aid, but they also help the patients do daily household chores that they are no longer able to perform.

This group is the perfect group to educate and train in several areas to be advocates to the people in their community. The first workshop we did with this group was on basic counseling and human development. Last week we did our second workshop on child abuse. The problem of child abuse is very big in many of the communities mostly because people are not educated on how they are hurting their child physically, mentally, and emotionally. During the workshop, the HBCs were very interested in the topic and had many questions about how to stop child abuse, what to do when you see it, and what the consequences are to a child. They said that the topic was very relevant as they experience this in their communities often. They also learned a bit about parenting for their own homes. I hope that they will now take the information and educate their communities. Many of them asked for extra handouts to give to people they know which I see as the first step of this workshop being a success. We look forward to the other 3 workshops that we have planned and hope they will be just as successful.