22 September 2022
Charl Cilliers Police Spokesperson, Const Bongiwe Mqoco together with two social workers from Siphephile Haven Centre for abused women and children visited Vanstadens Dam Primary School to engage learners on issues that affect them daily.
According to Const Mqoco, they spoke to Grade 6 & 7 learners.
“As it is our responsibility to create awareness, we engaged learners on children’s rights and responsibilities to those rights.
We believe that to build a better future, our kids need to know that for every right there is also a responsibility,” said Const Mqoco.
Some of the rights discussed were the right to education, responsibility to study, right not to be abused and the responsibility to report abuse.
Another issue they spoke about was the importance of preserving heritage as it symbolizes someone’s identity.
“It is important for us to teach our children the importance of culture and respecting other people’s beliefs, and not to discriminate other people’s languages.
As the children were speaking freely and willing to engage more, we ended up talking about the issue of bullying and gender-based violence.
During the GBV discussion, it turned out that most children thought it speaks about the abuse against women and children only.
We educated them that GBV does not have a specific gender as it affects everyone, Const Mqoco added.
They closed the day in style by tasking boys to hand over the sanitary towels to girls.
“It is another way of teaching boys to respect girls and vice versa.
We encouraged boys to speak out and even cry when there is something bothering them instead of bottling their feelings.
“Our parting words were, ‘Education is the key to better future, you all have dreams, and you are not different to those attending model c schools. It all depends on your determination.’”
