A big, bold welcome to SPEAKS who have joined our global members’ network. SPEAKS, a Malaysia-based organisation, stands for Safety Programme Emboldening Adolescents, Kids and Society.
They are an organisation that facilitates mindset-change grounded in knowledge, skills, respect, understanding and acceptance. Recognising the evolving capacities of children and young people, they provide children with age-appropriate information on sexuality so that they are able to fully embrace themselves while supporting parents in their journey as they figure out “How do we talk to children and young people about sex and sexuality in a meaningful way?”
Their main activities include the following:
- Facilitate the creation of Child Safeguarding Policies for schools and organisations
- Provide Comprehensive Sexuality Education for children aged 4 to 18 years old
- Train interested organisations to facilitate and institutionalise Comprehensive Sexuality Education
- Facilitate programmes on building and being in healthy relationships for young people
- Facilitate programmes for adults and parents to familiarise and unpack their understanding of sexualities
We love how they illustrated their child safeguarding journey!
As always, we like to post a news story about new members – in their own words – and promote the organisation amongst the KCS network and online following:
What made you decide to join the KCS members’ network?
Our aim is to enhance and strengthen the child protection ecosystem in Malaysia. In order to achieve that, we want to ensure we hold ourselves to a higher standard and do things professionally. Therefore, we decided to join KCS to enhance our skills and increase our knowledge of the subject.
What is your key driver to implementing child safeguarding?
To ensure the rights of the children are upheld, minimize the possible risk and maximize the support to the children we, directly and indirectly, encounter in our work and life.
Where do you think your organisation will be regarding child safeguarding in a year?
We are in the midst of developing our very own children safeguarding policy. The policy should be ready by the end of 2021. We are seeing SPEAKS advocating the implementation of children safeguarding to organisations, especially in Malaysia after that.
What message do you want to tell your staff, donors and the wider world?
It takes a village to raise a child. Keeping children safe is not just the Government’s or CSO responsibility. Everyone needs to be part of the child protection ecosystem, regardless of who we are and represent. To the eyes of the child, we are all equal and needed.
Find out more about SPEAKS via:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SPEAKSTogether
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speaks.together/
Website: www.speaks.asia