Why do we need to raise awareness?
If you spend any time at all on the internet, you have definitely come across some kind of online campaigns and/or awareness movements. Often I see a mixed reaction towards these; “Oh god this is terrible” acclaims someone as they scroll past the social media post or “what is the point of this? It’s not helping anyone” declares another. Anger, curiosity, annoyance, and sometimes genuine concern, a mixed bag of responses. The question that looms over activists, social workers and people trying to make their voice heard is “Am I really helping anyone?” If it is often tiring and unsatisfying to keep talking about an issue and not receiving a response, then why do we do it? Because we care. We want to reach out to those who care. We want to make more people care. Truth is, no struggle is won alone; history speaks for itself when we see that every time the human race has stood up for something together, we have won. Awareness is our medium to reach out to people to form these teams, allies. We are very fortunate that we are able to do this while sitting on our couch, we are making our voices heard but at the same time, we must not become complacent. Social media activism is often criticized for being the laziest way to speak up, but it is only one pillar of a very dynamic building. Awareness helps us reach people of all ages and generations, something that would not be possible if we did not have these campaigns. Raising public awareness has known to significantly change a community’s knowledge and attitudes about social justice issues. It is particularly crucial to raise awareness about child abuse as it has severe consequences. Children are our future youth, our future leaders, they are what our world will be, and we cannot afford to raise a generation of abused, tortured, and unstable children. Children deserve care, love, affection, and a chance to learn, every child does. We need to stand up for them because they can not stand up for themselves. Statistics prove that survivors of child abuse have a higher likelihood of having mental health difficulties, are more likely to drop out of high school, and continue to struggle with shame and guilt. They are forever burdened with a pain that was not theirs to begin with. We can stop this; we can play our part in trying to stop this. How? Awareness. Spread the word. Spread the message. If every citizen in this city, province, country, the world is vigilant and against child abuse then no child shall ever go through this. It all comes down to us, it’s not enough to simply believe in something; as Gandhi said, “you must be the change you want to see in the world.”
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When you think about child abuse what do you think of? I am a little embarrassed to admit that I think about movies where it’s easy to spot, or a broken foster care system or a million other things that don’t include my friends and I. Why? I don’t know, I guess I’m lucky enough to say that I don’t face that problem so I used to think neither did the people close to me. But when I started looking into the topic I realized how close minded I was being, I didn’t think of different types of abuse, that it’s not just physical, but also verbal, sexual and emotional. I learned that 32% of Canadian adults reported that they had faced child abuse growing up, and that’s only including the one’s that come forward! I broke that down a little deeper in terms of what that means to me... I wrote down the first 10 names that popped up into my head: family, friends, even a classmate. Statistically at least 3 people on that list would have faced some form of abuse. I started to question how safe of an environment I was creating for those people to come forward, or even broach the topic to me. Was I open? Was I creating that safe space they may need? What was I doing to show support to anyone and everyone in my life whether they need it or not? By opening my mind I started to change my mindset. I encourage you after reading this to do the same, it might not come fast or easily but every single one of us need to start opening our mind.
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September 2020
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