The Marketplace and the Child

Welcome to our final post on our Child Sexual Abuse outreach. We are excited to share our experience in Lagos market with you. It all started in front of the UBA cash machine where we split into groups of two and visited stalls in Martins and Leventis streets of the market respectively. 

We applied a top to bottom approach by talking to parents, children and even persons who were neither of both sides, believing that they will in one way or the other have an interaction with children.

The outreach was characterized by volunteers engaging stall owners and customers about Child Sexual Abuse while emphasizing the need for joint collaboration to curb the menace. We find it highly imperative that everyone is involved in the fight because an abuse on one child is a ticking time bomb for the world at large as it tends to alter the line of growth of any child affected by it thereby threatening the global goal for attaining the highest standard of living for every individual.

On the whole, we interacted with about 355 persons through a team of Nine volunteers who braved the heat of the sun and a potential change of weather hence the  likelihood of rain at the same time. 

The feedback from participants was highly impressive as we had feedback backing up the assertion. Many parents were grateful as their children lacked requisite information and they as parents did not have adequate information to pass on to their children about the menace or even realize how rampant or even grave the situation is. We also discovered a general myth that many believed that only girls were potential victims as many did not direct their minds to the fact boys stand the same risks as girls do. Abuse is no respecter of gender.

  

We found certain experiences particularly interesting. Some of which include times we needed to tighten our language game and switch in between speeches, been invited into stalls and asked funny questions such as "are you not too young to be teaching adults about this?", times when we were shunned and we had to take it in good faith, times we practiced our pitch especially after the whatsapp training, spending more time in certain stalls because people had insightful experiences and advice to share and  tough times convincing people to take pictures among others.

We are grateful for the opportunity to be of service and are excited about future opportunities to do so much more for the world at large.

P.S: The market is an amazing place for promotion of social causes. You are poised to meet people from different backgrounds and stages in life, all in one place!

Special thanks to the volunteers that made it to the market; Aminat, Tunde, Elizabeth, Kofo, Kayode, Seun, Toyosi, Wole and Bamise and even bigger thanks to Adesua for making the efforts to celebrate her birthday with us in the market. God bless you all.

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