'We need protection” – A project from a blind student

After six months of preparation, “We need protection”, a new project aimed towards teaching self-defense to children, has been put into practice.

'We need protection” – A project from a blind student
“Although childhood is considered to be the best time in one’s life, many children have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD due to sexual abuse. I always wanted to do something to prevent these crimes from happening so no child would have to suffer their consequences”, said Dinh Van Loc, a senior from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Pedagogy’s Education Management Faculty and the brain behind “We need protection”.
The project with slogan “Try to protect kids until you can still do it” carried out by Dinh Van Loc and his friends won the third prize of the national contest “Students with scientific research” and the first prize of the 2018 Eureka Awards, aiming to encourage and honor local students’ scientific projects, organized by the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union.
“We need protection” consists of three contents. In addition to providing information on various body parts, the handbook also increases the know-hows for children to identify their “private parts”, individuals to avoid as well as situational exercises on how to prevent sexual abuse, and even directions for teachers and parents to help their children prevent sexual abuse including places to contact and related laws.
Apart from it, the 7-minute videos with cute illustrations to help children remember how to properly handle situations through visual memory; the mini games with 44 questions to test the knowledge children got from the handbooks and videos.
With this practical program, diverse content, and the effectiveness in helping children memorize these guidance through everyday stories, the project’s website has received a lot of attention from parents and teachers.
With its motto “Protect our children while we can”, Dinh Van Loc’s project has placed third in 2018 inter-department science fair and placed first in 2018 Eureka science fair.
“Being blind is not something that can stop you from contributing to society”, said Loc. Indeed, Loc is skilled in computer science as well as passionate in his field of study.
With that passion in mind, when Loc constantly saw news about preteen sexual abuse and the effects on its victims, he realized there were too little information on its prevention. That was when he came up with an idea about a project to prevent sexual abuse from happening to children from 6 to 11 years of age.
As the project started, Loc and his team faced the biggest problem which there were too few Vietnamese documents on sexual abuse prevention, especially those that are scientific and highly applicable.
Following a teacher’s suggestion, they scoured foreign documents extracting information suitable for Vietnamese. ”We had to extract, recompile and ask our teachers for opinion to be able to complete the content for 6 to 11-year-old children”, Loc shared.
After the whopping 6-month preparation, “We need protection” was completed. In the future, Loc hopes to further improve the content of the handbooks, videos and add more questions the mini game as well as opening the contact section to receive questions and responses about the project.

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