COSA has implemented a two-tiered approach to solve the challenges it confronts. The first set of solutions focuses on helping girls who are involved in or are at-risk of sexual exploitation and abuse. The second focuses on educating the wider community about the risks of child abuse, recognizing its indicators and developing ways of alleviating these problems.
HELPING ABUSED AND AT-RISK CHILDREN
COSA, through its dedicated and caring staff, takes a pro-active and practical approach to helping abused and at-risk children. The system COSA has adopted has proved very successful in providing girls with relief, hope and opportunity for a brighter future. This system upholds the following components:
1. Identify children who are in need of assistance
COSA staff work closely with local, regional and national child protection agencies as well as with members of local communities to locate and identify children who are victims of abuse or who are at-risk.
2. Remove the children from the abusive or threatening situation and provide a safe and welcoming home
One of the primary functions of COSA is to provide a home for abused and at-risk girls. Baan Yuu Suk provides a safe, warm and welcoming setting for up to 25 girls at a time. Here these girls are protected from immediate danger and given a place where the healing process can begin. In this environment, the girls become each other's family, either temporarily or on a longer-term basis, providing each other with support and the empathy that comes with shared experience.
3. Support children and counsel their families to enable the child to return home, when possible
COSA staff provides guidance and a supportive, caring atmosphere for girls while they live at the shelter. In addition, the staff routinely visits the families of the girls, to identify problem areas and collectively work on solutions which will enable the child to return home when possible. Follow-up visits are also made to families when a child has been returned home, ensuring their continual safety and well-being.
4. Encourage the development of independent living skills
A key step in the healing and rehabilitation process is the increased self-esteem that comes with attaining independent living skills. The girls at COSA assist in such activities as the purchasing of provisions, preparation and clean-up of meals and the overall maintenance of their housing. The girls are also encouraged to participate in community events and various projects aimed at self sustainability.
5. Integrate the children into the education system
The girls living at COSA's shelter are guided back into local primary or secondary schools where they not only receiving formal education but where they also engage in conventional childhood socialization and friendships. COSA facilitates and financially supports school attendance and, whenever possible, financially assists with university education as well.
6. Provide vocational training
An essential component of the COSA solution is ensuring that the girls residing at the shelter acquire practical skills which they can apply once they leave. These new abilities provide the girls with the opportunity to earn an income with dignity. COSA has developed vocational training for its girls in secretarial skills, agriculture (including rice-cultivation, fish-farming and vegetable gardening); pastry-making and crafts-making. Whenever possible, the results of these activities are marketed or used by COSA itself in order to demonstrate the practical gains that these activities could potentially have.
EDUCATING THE COMMUNITY
COSA understands that prevention is the best cure and that long-term solutions to the challenges it is confronting depend on the education, awareness and participation of the greater community at both the grass-roots and institutional levels. Therefore, COSA staff conducts the following activities:
- Create an increase in public awareness regarding child abuse and women's rights through lectures and printed information at schools, community groups and within hill tribe communities.
- Establishing community action groups to help in monitoring, reporting on, resolving and preventing instances of child abuse, with a special focus on creating such groups within hill tribe communities.
- Supporting vocational training initiatives within the hill tribe communities to help create income-earning alternatives to the illegal trades.
- Networking with other child protection services and programs.
- Collecting and analyzing information to determine community trends in child rearing. Through investigative visits to the homes of possible child-abuse victims and at-risk children, COSA staff notes trends in family dynamics and the particular threats involved. This information is pooled and analyzed to help make the community aware of trends in the indicators of abuse.
- Sharing and exchanging data with other child-abuse, child-rights and women's- rights research projects such as the Research Institute at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
- Participating in and speaking at conferences and policy initiatives which deal with child-protection issues.