A1. The Project has following set of deliverables

• CACA Safety Workbooks (K – 12)
• Parent-Teacher-Support Staff Booklets (Levels – 01, 02 and 03) in English, Hindi and regional
  languages for parents, teachers and the support staff.
• Capacity building and sensitization cum awareness workshops on Academic, Clinical and Legal
  aspect of Child Sexual Abuse, Child Rights, and Gender Equality for teachers, parents and the
  support staff.
• Certificates for school coordinator, school principal and school at the end of the academic year.

CACA Safety Workbooks
Parent-Teacher-Support Staff Booklets

A2. No. The issues of gender equality, child sexual abuse and child rights are not limited to any particular school system in India. They are relevant to any Indian School (Kindergarten to 12) that is affiliated to central, state or foreign board. Remember, life skills and value education are not board specific but generic in nature.

A3. The reason being:

• The CACA safety workbooks are like safety drills or exercises that are to be practiced on regular basis just like each time you board an airplane you go through a safety drill instruction.
• Any teaching exercise with children has to be conducted in accordance with their age appropriate learning abilities and the students’ batch size has to be small.
• If we try to achieve the objectives of project CACA via regular workshops for students, the number of workshops (qualified and trained resource persons) that will be required to conduct for schools across India will be unachievable.
• Thus it boils down to school teachers to conduct these workshops on regular basis which in other words mean teaching the CACA safety workbooks to students within the school timetable.
• Life skill and value education/ moral science subject already has a place in schools’ time table and CACA safety workbooks are based on these two subjects. Besides, the companion booklets and workshops in each academic year for teachers/ parents/ support staff sensitizes them on clinical, legal and academic aspects of child safety, gender equality and child abuse.
• The workbooks hinge on existing age appropriate reading and comprehension ability of students and can be taught in students’ familiar and trusted peer to peer and teacher-student environment. Thus the workbooks can be easily integrated with the existing ecosystem of schools.

A4. The project focuses on child abuse prevention, gender equality and child rights. The project blends with various related safety guidelines, advisories, rules and regulations, laws and verdicts by various NCPCR/SCPCR, Govt. Ministries and Departments, Directorates of Education and School Boards and that every school has to consider/ follow/ implement.

Broadly speaking every school by and large has to prepare for following types of safety for its students.

Child Safety Checklist for Schools

1. Infrastructure Safety
2. Health Safety
3. Transportation
4. Student Protection Mechanisms
5. *Personal, Social, Emotional and Sexual Safety
6. Reporting And Response Mechanism
7. Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Management
8. *Cyber Safety

The project keeping child at the center academically empowers, educates and sensitizes all the stake holders i.e. children, their parents and teachers and non-teaching staff on various aspects of safety as per the above check list with focus on * points 4, 5, 6 and 8.

A5. The workbooks are not author driven. They are a result of collective efforts of experienced school counsellors, academicians, child psychiatrists, Judges/ lawyers. The books have assimilated various inputs from stake holders i.e. children, parents, teachers and support staff. The workbooks and the entire project is the result of a democratic chain of events like Focus Group Discussions, Consensus Building, Opinion Polls, Conventions, Pilot Programme. The workbooks evolve under the Project CACA Committee. Besides, the workbooks and workshops are mapped with various content like:

Women & Child Development Govt. of Delhi – Awareness generation material on Prevention of CSA

NCET/UNFPA – AEP-Adolescence Education Programme

DCPCR (Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights) – Guidelines for Prevention of Child Abuse in schools and Awareness Generation Material on Prevention of Child Abuse.

Ministry of Woman and Child Development (Govt. of India) – Reader for teachers and parents on Raising Happy Children and providing Safe Childhoods.

NCERT – Text books

Ministry of Home Affairs (Govt. of India) – Guidelines for Cyber Safety

National Institute of Disaster Management/ Vigyan Prasar – Activity Book on Disaster Management for School Students

CBSE/ CISCE/ State Boards/ Directorates of education/ NCPCR – National Commission for Protection of Child Rights/ SCPCR -State Commissions for Protections of Child Rights – Circulars / Advisories/ Notifications/ Guidelines on children safety like:

advocacy of POCSO Act/ Box; Pledge for an Abuse-Free World for Children; Exhibition of film KOMAL – A film for children and on Child Sexual by Child-line India; Abuse; safe and effective use of internet and digital technologies in schools, corporal punishment ban, etc.

A6. It is the mandate of the schools to bring behavioural changes among its stake holders in particular and society at large so that the society as a whole becomes happy, healthy and safe. Greek philosopher Plato wrote in The Republic that the “mark of an educated person is the willingness to use one’s knowledge and skills to solve the problems of society. Education must imbue children with a proactive social conscience. Society is the empowering context for individuals.” Moreover, the NCERT has prescribed Human Sexual Reproduction from class VIII onward. It also talks about puberty, adolescence pregnancy, contraceptives and HIV. All this has not backfired. In fact India has been a success story among developing countries as far as prevention/ control of AIDS is concerned. Thanks to the awareness / education. We strongly believe Child Sexual Abuse can also be prevented to a great extent through awareness / education.

The CACA safety workbooks initiate a series of dialogue on issues of child rights, gender equality and child abuse among the stake holders. The point to note here is that the core principles/ derivatives of project CACA are not absolute in themselves like the laws of physics. The sensitivity of the issues and non-absoluteness of the principles/derivatives at times make it difficult even for the professionally trained teachers to teach the safety workbooks. There will be challenges. The challenges can be broadly classified as following:

1. Vocabulary:
   Examples: Underwear, hugs and kisses, private parts, transgender, menstruation, sanitary pads, diapers, etc.
2. Images’ Explicitness
3. Conceptual:
   Examples:

a. The safety workbooks encourage children to take their feelings as the yardstick to define abuse however, an unsafe touch can be perceived as a  pleasurable/ safe touch by a child;

b. Defining private parts of boys and girls in statements like: “Private parts are those that we keep covered in front of others”, “mouth is a special private part that we do not cover” creates ambiguity among young children because these statements are not true in absolute terms as at times young boys and even girls can be bare chest in front of others.

c. Defining a stranger to young children in absolute terms like “a person whom you have never talked to before…”.

d. Evaluation/ interpretation of open ended questions:
     Examples:

 i. How will you feel when your best friend breaks your favourite toy by mistake?

 ii. From whom you do not like to have hugs and kisses?

There can be hundreds of different answers for these questions like a child may not like hugs and kisses from her mother when she just comes out of the kitchen sweating and smelling like a vegetable.

e. The unknown (unintentional) outcome …

It will be judicious for the teachers designated for CACA safety Workbook teaching to interact with English, Social Science, Science (Biology), Physical Education, Computer Science, Life Skills, Value Education teachers of the school, if there is a school counsellor of the school. They all will be of great help. They have a fair idea about the above challenges as they are already dealing with them to certain extent through their respective subject teaching. For example:

• Adolescence/ puberty (one of the core principles of the Workbooks) is already being taught by biology teachers;
• Laws and constitution by social science teacher;
• How to be assertive without being disrespectful or violent by physical education teacher;
• Internet vocabulary by computer science teacher, etc.

A7. No. They primarily teach students how to take right decisions under various situations that can otherwise take an ugly turn. They teach children about how to be responsible and stay happy, healthy and safe.

A8. No. not at all! The workbooks use stories, plays, poems, letters, cartoons strips, activities, what if situations to empower children against the day-today situations that they face or may face or have faced pertaining to abuse / child rights / gender in-equality. It provides them with an opportunity to have a dialogue and express themselves with their peers, juniors, seniors, parents and teachers on sensitive issues in a way that is academically, psychologically, and legally correct.

A9. No, not at all! The prime role of parents/ teachers/ principals is to initiate a process of dialogue on child rights, gender equality and the sensitive issue of child abuse among themselves by keeping the child at the center and follow the parent-teacher-support staff booklet and the safety workbooks. The workbooks do not teach any disrespect to anyone but yes, they do promote the imperative behaviour changes required from all stakeholders – students, parents, teachers and non-teaching staff for prevention of child abuse. For example the workbooks opposes corporal punishment: Some of us still believe that “spare the rod spoil the child” is OK under some situations because sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind for the overall benefit of the child. But remember! Corporal punishment is not only inhuman but it also conditions a child to take physical violence as a norm and she would find it difficult to object or resist to it in any given situation.
The workbooks teach children to be assertive and to say no to a touch or a behaviour that makes them uncomfortable or unsafe. Remember, there is a difference between being assertive and being disrespectful or rude or violent.

                                 “Be the change you want to see in the world” – Mahatma Gandhi.

A10. The number of periods that you have allotted to life skills and value education

A11. At present these workbooks are available only in English language. We can discuss the feasibility of development/ modification of them as per your requirement.

A12. Yes, you can, but you may have to take permission from your country’s Govt.

A13. Yes you can to some extent! The workbooks have open as well as close ended questions. For open ended questions there can be no standard answer. The open ended questions will require a dialogue rather than evaluation between the child, parent and teacher.

A14. Yes. Matrix (core principles/ learning outcomes) of CACA Safety Workbooks

A15. By filling the implementation form thus prescribing the CACA safety workbooks to your school students.

A16. In order to coordinate for the various workshops to be conducted in your school. The coordinator should preferably be the School Counsellor or a teacher who is teaching Social Science / Physical Education /Biology-Science / English Literature / Life Skills / Value Education

A17. Our directors, advisors, committee and team members and partner and supportive organisations/ NGOs/ institutions help us in conducting various types of workshops. These resource persons are usually lawyers, committee members, judges, psychologists, psychiatrists, self defence experts, child rights activists, gender equality activists, academicians, rationalists, etc.

A18. Yes, you can involve your bookseller for purchase of these workbooks. At present these workbooks cannot be bought online.

A19. Yes. But workshops alone are not a true solution to the problem that has reached epidemic proportions. Remember, Institutions should not preserve the problems to which they are a solution. Still you can conduct only the workshops under project CACA but we will not be able to prioritise these workshops. We will connect you with our partner and supportive organisations/ institutions/ NGO’s and you will have to liaison with them for the dates and the resource persons.

SAF Social Axiom Foundation – the NGO has the copyrights for these workbooks. Students buy books for life skills/value education/general knowledge, etc. so we believe they will be able to buy these safety workbooks which are the need of the hour. If you still have limitations you can always photocopy these workbooks for your students but do give credit to the project.

A20. Yes we can.