Stairway employs a multi-faceted approach in the fight against child sexual abuse and exploitation. Essentially we work on advocacy, capacity building and networking to increase awareness of the issues from ground level (children, families and communities) to government departments (Department of Social Welfare & Development, and the Department of Education), and with a strong focus on training and sensitizing the National Police, Social Workers, Teachers, along with multiple non-government organizations (NGOs). The Break the Silence Network counts more than 50 civil society organizations nationwide, and the model is being replicated in several other countries in the region.
Creative Advocacy
Compared to direct service intervention, advocacy is not the most tangible child protection approach. Yet it is the most effective way to reform the current culture of silence perpetuating child rights violations. Stairway employs a creative approach to advocacy, using the arts as a means to confront and debate the issues facing children and campaign for the rights of marginalized children worldwide. Animation films, theater, and music are central mediums in our advocacy for change.
Capacity Building
Hand in hand with our activities to create public awareness about child sexual abuse are trainings that we provide to sectors with direct interaction and influence with children. It is not enough for them to say that they are aware that abuse does happen, but they must also feel that they have the capacity to help address the problem. The prevailing ignorance and denial about the issue can be broken through capacity building. Activities range from giving orientations about child sexual abuse to enabling partners to deal directly with children victims.
Direct Service
With Stairway’s campaign to help both children and adults alike to realize that child sexual abuse is a crime that must be acknowledged and stopped, it is inevitable to encounter some disclosures. Stairway thus provides direct intervention services to the children who have disclosed, whether through a short-term residential treatment program, individual and group counseling, accompaniment to government and other agencies, or coordination with the local social welfare officer. However, networking efforts are made to ensure that the child has a support system aside from Stairway.
Partnership
As child sexual abuse is a complicated issue with a host of physical, psychological, and social consequences, the approach required to address it needs to be multifaceted as well. Not one organization can provide all the needs that a victim and his/her family have, so Stairway ensures that partnerships are made with organizations that can be tapped to offer their particular expertise to help the child.
Break the Silence National Network
To reach a greater number of organizations and cover a wider geographical area in terms of Child Protection, Stairway initiated the Break the Silence Network. Starting out training only 8 partners back in 2008, the BTS Network anno 2015 counts 53 partners spread over 9 regions nationwide.
Through the Break the Silence campaign, Stairway has trained and is training thousands of teachers, social workers, street educators, church people and others in an attempt to motivate them to take part in a massive movement of information and education on the issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation. However, the ultimate beneficiaries of this program are the children. With the materials that we have produced and the networks we have established and trained, we reach and help protect children all over the Philippines and in several other South- and Southeast Asian countries. With our plans to develop an online training platform with advanced e-learning, we aim to reach even much farther into other parts of the world in the future.
Education and Health
Children on the streets suffer a myriad of consequences for being abandoned and neglected. Aside from being highly at-risk for sexual abuse, they also suffer from lack of good nutrition and proper hygiene. Most of the children we find in the government rehabilitation centers are malnourished and small for their age, have scabies all over, and some suffer from tuberculosis.
As their life on the streets is focused on survival, street children are also deprived of their right to an education. Many do not know how to read nor write.
It is this disheartening situation that Stairway seeks to address. The organization offers a unique and creative program in natural and pristine surroundings that gives children at risk the opportunity to grow and develop to their fullest capacities and capabilities.
Results
Year 2015, twenty-five years after Stairway was established, the organization’s programs and services, as well as its reach, have broadened. As the organization has realized through the years how pervasive the issue of child sexual abuse is in the country, more programs and services were conceptualized, implemented, and revised as needed. Partnerships and networks have necessarily been expanded as well, knowing that no one organization will be able to single-handedly tackle such a complex issue.
Creative and dynamic, Stairway manages to keep up with the changing faces of child sexual abuse, and remains at the forefront with the appropriate strategies to combat the issue.