Local organisation works on eliminating violence against children

Wilbrought Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter

A LOCAL organisation, Hope for Children in Christ (HOCIC) has embarked on a programme that will see them working on eliminating all forms of violence against children.

The organisation partakes in humanitarian services in implementing livelihoods, child protection and empowerment programmes for vulnerable communities and marginalised groups with the main focus on women, youth, children and people with disabilities.

Under one of the organisations pillar child protection and psycho social support which focuses on taking care of the children and mentoring them, HOCIC Monitoring and Evaluation officer, Mrs Siboniso Mugare stated that they focusing on embark program which is elimination of all forms of violence against children.

“This focuses mainly of children as we noticed that research and statistics are actually highlighting that there is lot of abuse cases among children but this one is implemented in Umguza. So this what we are saying we want to contribute to other partners in coming together to reduce these cases of violence,” said Mrs Mugare.

She revealed that they were focusing on awareness raising, using a family centred approach by not working with the children alone but working with the entire family in teaching them good parenting skills.

“All those structures we work with them and capacitate them. We also form clubs among these children called Peer Club where they teach one another and sensitize another on types of abuse and how to handle cases inclined with abuse.

“There are mentors that we train that will enrol other young people within their specific community because we feel like we can’t address every child so if we train the mentors they are the ones who are going to go ahead and train the others within their local villages in Umguza,” she said.

On the issue of drugs and substance abuse Mrs Mugare mentioned that they have manuals that they have developed with National Aids Council, and live skills and education program and are working in partners with the Ministry of Youth to talk about the issue of drug and substances abuse and finding ways to reduce it.

“We talk about all those drug and substance abuse issues, we try to encourage and explaining the dangers of drugs as we have heard a lot of complains from the CPCs and mentors that we work with to say there a lot of drug and substance abuse so this is one of the topic we really talk about with children as we are envisioning children who are going to be functional people in their community. As our vision as an organization is that we envision a child who is social and mentally, physically and emotionally high esteem”, said Mrs Mugare.