By: Marianne Frølund
Coaches, leaders and police officers were gathered, to participate in the Capacity Building Seminar in Moldova on November 26th-28th.
Child protection and building an SSP-network (School + Sport + Police) were the main topics of the seminar. These are two of Cross Cultures most important focus areas, as they are crucial elements in our Open Fun Football Schools. The focus on child protection and SSP-network builds on the basic perception that efficient crime prevention measures are not a matter for the police alone. Instead, Cross Cultures believe that successful crime prevention can be best achieved through a cross-sectorial network, including cooperation between schools, police, social services, and sports clubs. Therefore, a number of different stakeholders were invited to the Capacity Building Seminar to present their experiences from the field, and engage the participants to share notions and perceptions on problems being addressed.
Representatives from AUFCR (All-Ukrainian Foundation for Children Rights) were invited to talk about how they work with SSP and child protection in Ukraine. They held an interesting talk and facilitated several workshops for the leaders, coaches and police officers. The workshops evolved around children’s rights, building the SSP-network, and case exercises on how to act and how to use the SSP-network, when encountering difficult situations when working with children.
Ulrica Granberg, a representative from the Swedish police was invited to talk at the seminar. She talked about how the Swedish police is helping the Moldovan police in implementing a new police reform. She talked about the importance of community police, and how the police can go from “force” to “service”.
Finally a representative from the Moldovan police presented numbers on crimes in concern to children. An important notion from this presentation is, that young children are not criminals, but victims of crimes. Furthermore, she underlined the importance of focusing on prevention of abuse on violence with children as victims.
After the seminar, the participating coaches, leaders and police officers will return to their local communities and start the implementation of their respective action plans, based on the lessons learned.
