I(Simran) and Vrinda are friends for the last 9 years and even though we do not live in the same city our bond gets stronger every passing year. We both are into social activities but the starting of an organization was a very big deal for us. We never planned to do so. It was a decision that we took in heat of the moment. So, it all began when I was sitting with my family and watching the news when breaking news came by where a mother of 3 months old was seeking help from the fellow parents as her baby’s photo was in a porn site and it was flooded with nasty comments. I was feeling so bad and it was haunting me for days, so then one night I called Vrinda and we discussed it. At that very moment, we decided to start an organization that spreads awareness on Child Maltreatment. The thing which appalled us more was every 3 out of 4 children suffer from abuse at the hands of parents, caregivers, and family members. Within a span of a few days, we created a team of 5 people and thus founded Project Blue Ribbon.
We have collaborated with both National and International Activists and we even started a platform for survivors to share their stories and empower other people to do the same. We also started our website where people write blogs on child abuse and how we can deal with a child abuse victim. Child Abuse is such a sensitive topic that somethings people are not ready to speak about it and there are times where the parents shush their children because of societal pressures. We believe “if today we support just 1 person to speak out their own story, it will help 100s of people to stand up and share theirs.”
In the last 3 months, we had a conversation with many survivors and what shocked us the most was that the cases of abuse were not done by some unknown person but the family members and close family friends. We and trying our best to normalize the topic and we are also trying to educate children and parents about sex education and the importance of it in today’s world. Recently, we also did a survey with our social media followers asking them ‘What will they do if there are no Pedophilia for a day?’ and the answers where astonishing. Around 40% of our followers said there will be safe environment and children can be happy, 25% said that they will have no fear if their children to leave their children alone in a park and the rest believed that it will be better for all the children as they do not have to suffer from the pain of molestation at such an early age.
The most common question we face is why no men are speaking about their survivor stories, the problem that comes here is we live in a society where the male person is depicted to be powerful, the boys in India are generally taught “Boys don’t cry (Ladke rote nahi)” but what they should be taught is “Crying is not bad(Rona burri baat nahi).” We want to normalize these things and support every individual irrespective of their gender to speak their voice out so that no child will face any kind of abuse in their life.
© Fame 2020.
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