COGNISANT that many students and teachers in the region are affected by domestic violence, the Region Three Department of Education, through its Guidance and Counselling Unit, on Wednesday started a two-day Anti-Domestic Violence Workshop at its Vreed-en-Hoop headquarters.

The workshop engaged some 30 teachers and 35 students and was held under the theme: “Breaking the silence through empowerment and education.”
It is hoped that the workshop would help to empower teachers to reach out to those students in their schools who live in homes where domestic violence occurs.

“Through our welfare visits, we have discovered that there are many learners who come from domestic violence homes and you would even find that there are a few teachers who are in abusive relationships; so we would like to empower them either so they can get out, or so that they would not get into any abusive relationship. It is also, so that we can teach them [teachers] to identify learners who are from domestic violence homes, so that we can give them [students] the relevant support and referrals to help them out of the situation,” explained Regional Education Officer Annesta Douglas.

The workshop saw attendance of teachers from the nursery, primary and secondary school levels.
“From our welfare visits, we realise there are children from all three levels exposed to abusive activities, so we target teachers from all three levels,” Douglas related.
Senior Guidance and Counselling Officer, Priscilla Gonsalves, noted how widespread the issue of domestic violence was and the need for the education system to do its part in helping to eliminate this social ill.

“This unit felt it imperative that a strong stance against domestic violence is taken, because we believe that a life free of domestic violence is everyone’s right. Today’s venture was introduced to help restore and build lives, families, communities and our country at large one step at a time,” said Gonsalves.

The workshop was done in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Protection (MoSP). The first day of the workshop saw the teachers being engaged and involved in interactive sessions with MoSP Prevention and Education Officer, Diedre Ifill.

Ifill commended the collaboration between the MoSP and the Department of Education.
“The only way we’ll know about it is when we start talking about it, start collaborating. I’m hoping that if not all of you at least one of you will take something away from today’s session that will make a difference in somebody’s life. Indeed, this activity is timely,” Ifill told the audience of teachers.

The students are expected to be engaged today (Thursday, February 7, 2019) with the session again being facilitated by a team from the MoSP. With the students ,it is hoped that the session would encourage those in families where domestic violence occurs, to reach out and seek help.

“[Thursday] will be a session for the learners who are from abusive homes. We will be dealing with them to help them to tell, so that they can maybe link with someone, trust somebody who can help them to get out of the situation and to give the necessary support,” Douglas noted.