CSAAM – How it all started

Its all started on the road trip back from Lavasa, where a few of us bloggers had been invited to witness the Lavasa Womens Rally. Women being women, the discussions veered from blogging to family to trolls to, through some turn of the conversation, to child sexual abuse. We all had horrific stories we had heard and strong opinions about the subject. An informal consensus was arrived at to do ‘something’ about it. The something involved bloggers and online media, but the nitty gritty still had to be worked out.

Monika Manchanda and me decided to put finger to keyboard and come up with a month across the blogosphere dedicated to cause of spreading awareness about the menace that is Child Sexual Abuse, talking to parents about its prevalence, the need to be alert and aware, and most importantly, how to deal with it if it happens to one’s child.

It is a tough topic. Most friends one spoke with informally had a nasty experience tucked away somewhere in the deep recesses of their mind about an incident or two in their childhood which still haunted them. According to reports over 54 per cent of Indian children have experienced some sort of sexual abuse as a child, the degree of abuse varying from molestation to outright rape.

We put forth the idea to the blogosphere and the emails flowed in. People were delighted to be part of the cause, survivors offered to write in their stories, NGOs in the sphere offered their support and solidarity, bloggers volunteered to write on the issue and post on the topic, what had been a germ of an idea gained momentum. We were given a lovely logo by MayG which aptly showed a protective circle of caring hands, enfolding children playing in a peaceful world. We were on our way.

A twitter account was set up, a facebook pages, a blog. And finally, here we are. At the threshold of April 2011, the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month, an effort that will span a minimum of forty blogs across the blogosphere, include messages from NGOs working in this field and child sexuality experts who will help us, as parents, understand how to deal with this, how to protect our children from being victims to the best of our ability.

If you would like to share your story on your own blog or this blog, do mail us at  csa.awareness.april@gmail.com.

You post on your own blog, using the logo code for this blogathon which is this : <a href=”http://csaawarenessmonth.wordpress.com/” target=”blank”><img src=”http://csaawarenessmonth.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/csa-logo.jpg” alt=”" /></a>

You can follow us on twitter at @CSAawareness

And do join our Facebook page here to join the debate and stay updated about the latest posts and discussions.

Be aware. Be informed. Empower your children to say no, to come and tell you if something is wrong. Remember, we owe it to our children to keep them safe.

Post by Kiran