Website tackles violence against children

The website targets children and teenagers using cartoons, comic strips, videos, songs and children’s oral testimonies

Plan’s West Africa office has launched a website dedicated to raising awareness of and preventing violence against children.

The website, which has been jointly developed by Plan West Africa and Save the Children Sweden, is full of information about the different forms of violence suffered by children - physical, psychological and sexual violence, abandonment or neglect, abuse or exploitation and so on - and the ways that children and adults are working together to raise awareness of the issue and prevent violence against children.

Coinciding with Plan’s global Learn Without Fear campaign against violence in schools, the website targets children and teenagers using cartoons, comic strips, videos, songs and children’s oral testimonies as well as documents and articles.The website is available both in English and French versions.

There is also a blog where children from West Africa can have their say.

Violence against children is a global problem, but one that often stays hidden as many children do not speak up out of fear of the repercussions it might bring on themselves or their families and friends.

Unfortunately, violence against children is very difficult to accurately and reliably identify and quantify, and is at the same time often generally accepted as normal in many contexts.

Initiatives such as this new website and Plan’s Learn Without Fear campaign are endeavouring to bring the problem into the open and create safer environments in which children can grow and develop.

Plan's work in West Africa

Plan currently has child centred community development programs in the following countries in West Africa:

Benin
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Ghana
Guinea 
Guinea Bissau  
Liberia
Mali
Niger
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Togo