‘Every child is innocent, save them from abuse’, ‘See it! Hear it! Report it!’, ‘To help a child in danger, call 1098’ — these were some of the slogans written on the placards held up by college students while marching as a part of the ‘Walk Back to Innocence’ backathon.
Collector G.S. Sameeran flagged off the event that was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Young Indians (Yi) here on Tuesday.
Nearly 700 students from nine institutions walked backwards for 400 metres at the VOC Park, according to a volunteer of Yi Masoom Fellows Program.
“We conducted a backathon in 2019 when about 600 students took part. Due to COVID-19-induced restrictions, the event could not be held in the past two years.”
“We wanted people and children to be aware of the importance of reporting child abuse to authorities to curb the rising number of cases. Many children still do not know about this. So we wanted adolescents like college students to be the ambassadors to encourage victims, teachers, parents etc to come forward and report child abuse,” the volunteer said.
He said Yi and an NGO Arpan recently organised workshops at several private schools here to sensitise teachers to child abuse.
