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School board renews partnership with Canadian Centre for Child Protection

Partnership will help train educators and students about preventing child abuse
20200202 near north school board logo on wall turl
The Near North District School Board continues to partner with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection / Photo by Jeff Turl/BayToday.

The Near North District School Board (NNDSB) has partnered with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) to provide educational materials that will help train educators to identify and prevent sexual abuse and sex trafficking.

Emily Samuel, the principal of safe schools with the school board, acknowledges that the board has partnered with C3P “for quite some time,” as they work closely with “school boards across Canada.”

Particularly, the organization, which is a nationally recognized charity operating for over thirty years, offers resources and materials to school boards with the overall goal of eliminating child abuse.

“So we have been working with them before, and utilizing some of their resources,” Samuel explained.

Recently, the board has been specifically interested in promoting “how kids can stay safe online,” and have been using materials from C3P within their classrooms to achieve those goals.

Their board is not the only one receiving such help, as C3P mention they distribute over one million safety resources per year to schools, law enforcement, child welfare agencies, and other community stakeholders.

“Our partnership has grown over the past years,” Samuel enthused, mentioning that C3P has provided resources not only to the school but to parents as well, helping the board to produce an information session for parents regarding bullying prevention within schools last year.

The NNDSB has now extended their partnership with C3P, allowing them to take part—for free—in C3P’s “kids in the know program” for another three years.

Kids in know is an interactive safety education program designed to “reduce the risk of victimization online and in the real world,” C3P explains.

For instance, one lesson, “Billy brings his buddies,” is for kids around 7 years old, and reinforces what might be the oldest safety trick of all—bring a buddy.

There are many other lessons, all aiming to teach students about the dangers lurking online and in the world around them, and how best to avoid those pitfalls.

The lessons are for all ages, with the young ones learning  skills about the buddy system and not keeping secrets, to older youth learning about the dangers of sending explicit images via text messaging.

“Their full program runs from kindergarten to grade twelve,” Samuel said, and the board will have access to all lessons and resources, focusing on “how we define healthy relationships, how we keep ourselves safe online, and how we know what is and is not appropriate.”

The programming also identifies where students “can go for help” if necessary and point out resources available to threatened or abused children.

With the Ontario government instituting policy program memorandum 166 (PPM 166) this past July, school boards across the province must develop policy for school board anti-sex trafficking protocols.

Each board—the NNDSB included—must draft policy that will “play a key role in fighting sex trafficking and keeping children and youth safe from sexual exploitation,” the province’s website explains.

Education is a key to this, which means informing teachers on how to identify and prevent sex trafficking and abuse.

The lessons provided by C3P will aid with this, and Samuel anticipates the board will begin undertaking this training early next year.

One of those lesson programs is “commit to kids,” which contains “all the information any adult would need in order to support students,” Samuel said.

The information will “allow teachers to identify if students are potentially being trafficked or are being groomed to be trafficked, and of course what they can do to help that student.”

Sexual abuse and sex trafficking is a “huge topic to unpack” for both students and instructors, Samuel said, “so we are very grateful that we have this roadmap from C3P” that will help them create their policy and remain aligned with Ontario’s PPM 166 guidelines.

David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.


David Briggs, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

About the Author: David Briggs, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter covering civic and diversity issues for BayToday. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada
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