The project entitled „We protect children against sexual abuse” was designed to develop high-quality educational resources for parents, educators, as well as professionals working with children and their families. Such resources are scarce, both in terms of formal and informal education regarding protecting children against sexual abuse. Despite some alarming statistics made public by the Council of Europe and indicating that 1 in 5 children in Europe become victims of sexual abuse, and regardless of obligations under the Lanzarote Convention, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia lack systemic solutions and strategies to counteract the problem on the level of formal and informal education. At the earliest stages of life, it is parents who act as primary educators. Research suggests however, that in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe parents fail to discuss sexual abuse with their children, owing to insufficient awareness and knowledge of the topic. Another source of the difficulties is the fact that professionals are highly ineffective in identifying at-risk children and victims of sexual abuse, as their formal education does not provide them with necessary qualifications for that task. Standard academic curriculum of a psychologist, educator, teacher or social worker does not include any courses that focus on supporting parents in the area of the protection of children against sexual abuse, and/or encouraging parents to start psychological and legal intervention in cases of sexual abuse. A consortium brought together organizations protecting children against sexual abuse in three countries, relied on collective expertise and over a dozen years of cooperation, faced the above-described challenges specific to this region and developed two training courses using the e-learning method. One of them is addressed to parents of young and older children, and focuses on protecting children against sexual abuse in the real and the virtual world. The other one aims at a broad spectrum of professionals (all kinds of educators, teachers and psychologist), providing them with knowledge and skill in the area of diagnosing symptoms of sexual abuse, as well as supporting parents in intervention in cases of sexual abuse. Owing to the international character of the group of experts and considering the synergy effect, the new tools satisfies the needs of not only specific countries, but the entire region. The e-learning method guarantees broad range of effect, in particular reaching geographically underprivileged individuals, i.e. parents and professionals from little towns and villages. The added value of the project is that it demonstrates and teaches how to use ICT in education. An estimated, over 800 people participated directly in consultations, pilot activities and promotion; since the launch of the project webpage, it was visited by 7000 people (within the first 12 months after launching the e-learning courses, they were expected to be used by approx. 5000 individuals). Project outcomes were disseminated during local conferences held in each of the partnership countries. Parents from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia (and those who live abroad) who decided to make use of the educational resources developed under the project, expanded their knowledge and skills in the area of protecting children against sexual abuse. Professionals learnt to identify symptoms of sexual abuse and found out how to support parents in education and in intervention.The project contributed to fulfilling the obligations undertaken under Lanzarote Convention and will implement children’s rights to safety and protection against sexual abuse, as specified in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in the Directive 2011/92/UE of 13.12.2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The project “Breaking the silence together” is based on the educational priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy, the recommendations proposed by the Council of Europe Convention on child protection regarding exploitation and child sexual abuse, as well as the outcomes resulting from the main academic studies addressing the consequences of child abuse. Child sexual abuse is currently a significant problem in Europe affecting between 10% and 20% of children from any social and economic class in all European countries. The main research confirms the direct impact on academic performance. The project has successfully achieved the two main objectives: (1) To develop a Community programme on the prevention of child sexual abuse for European primary schools. 2) To provide a concrete tool for primary schools to become safe and child protection institutions, creating a climate that reduces early school leaving and increasing the rate of academic success.The loa project team has created five organizations. Three organisations from Spain, Austria and Poland with an extensive knowledge in the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse. A research centre in Greece specialising in childhood and child abuse. The fifth organisation has been a Europe-wide organisation, based in the Netherlands, bringing together directors from all European countries. Teachers, families and pupils from six rural and urban primary schools (two in Spain, two in Austria and two in Poland) as well as local and national reference organisations have also participated very actively in the project. The project initially carried out a collection and analysis of previous experiences in the development of prevention programmes of child sexual abuse in the school context, analysing the keys to success as well as the remaining challenges. This analysis is included in the report Learning from the experience (O1), available only in English in the project website (www.preventingchildsexualabuse.eu). This report was one of the starting points of the project. The final products obtained have been the result of a participative and collaborative methodology in which the beneficiaries themselves have taken part in all phases of the project. In this way, an initial training was carried out in the six collaborating primary schools aimed to teachers, families and pupils (separately). Subsequently, discussion groups were held (a total of 18, three in each school) to collect their proposals and needs to be covered in the community prevention program. At the same time, five expert advisory councils were created in each country, which also defined at their first meeting the challenges and needs to be addressed by the prevention programme. All this, together with the experience and knowledge of the project team, led to the creation of a first version of the prevention programme and the related resources. This first version of the products was piloted and assessed in the six schools by teachers, families and students as well as by the five advisory councils. The final version of the prevention program was obtained with the contributions performed. The prevention programme consists of four articulated base products, complementary and mutually supportive and concretely: The Community prevention programme (O2) as a framework document for primary school management teams; Teachers Manual(O3) for school teachers; Material for families and students (O4) made up of a booklet and a set of cards aimed at families and their children; Awareness Kit (O5) aimed at the community and with the aim to make the program visible and made up of a brief document, a poster and brochures aimed at families and children with key messages. The prevention programme and related products are available free of charge on the project website in five languages (German, Catalan, Spanish, English and Polish). Within the project framework, four national seminars have been organised in Spain, Austria, Greece and Poland as well as a final European Conference to present the final products obtained. Overall, more than 500 people took part while the prevention programme was very favourably received and highly valued in terms of quality, usefulness and need. As a result of the impact and success of the project, we can state that once the project has been financed by the European Commission, the products obtained are being implemented at different levels in all the countries participating in the project. We can state that the project has contributed directly to make progress in tackling a problem that affects a significant part of the European child population.

"The Schools Against Victimisation from an Early age (SAVE) Programme (https://saveprogramme.eu/ ) is a European project lead by the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barcelona, ​​specifically, by the Research Group on Child and Adolescent Victimization (GReVIA). SAVE's main goal has been to develop the skills of educational staff in order to support and protect children and adolescents victims of violence. The ultimate aim has been for this vulnerable group to be able to achieve academic content and social integration in school, despite their situation, with the help and support of school staff. To do so, SAVE partnership has designed an online training program for school staff across Europe, based on the use of innovation and the exchange of good practices between countries. The course has been designed by a multidisciplinary partnership formed by professors, educators, researchers and psychologists from Italy, Ireland, Poland, and Spain. It is composed of four modules that can be taken at the user’s pace. The modules address sexual victimisation, physical and emotional maltreatment, bullying and cyberbullying, and how to promote resilience (https://www.savetraining.eu/courses/ ). They are completely free, available in several languages, and have been evaluated by school workers and adults that have been victims of violence during their childhood in order to ensure that they are adapted to the needs of the public. (A full pre-print of this study can be found here: https://psyarxiv.com/sj6xr/)Each module addresses the following contents: - Management of inappropriate behaviors of children who may be going through a difficult or potentially traumatic situation. - Proposals to prevent child violence. - Development of techniques to detect children potentially at risk, address sensitive issues and provide effective support to students. - Knowledge of the process required to report a child at risk. - Promotion of resilience procedures. Also, SAVE includes a list of Open Educational Resources for each participating region, such as videos of SAVE presentations and research, specialised associations to contact locally for different types of victimization, the legal framework, and links to useful material, like movies, books, etc. SAVE also extends a certificate upon the completion of the training. It should be noted that SAVE has helped educational professionals to identify changes that they can make in their daily work in order to increase detection, report and prevention of victimisation. School staff also reported feeling more prepared to deal with disclosures as they are provided with tools to promote resilience and healthy coping strategies to help their students to overcome distress in the everyday school scenario. The impact that SAVE has achieved is the recognition by educational professionals in Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Spain as a very interesting and useful program that addresses a real problem in the daily reality encountered about child victimization, which can be identified and reported from schools and victims. According to the latest metrics (May 2021), the course has been visited a total of 41'34 times in its different versions (around 60% of visits for the Polish version, 24% for the Catalan one, 10% for the Spanish one, 4% for the Italian one and 2% for the English version, see annex: ""SAVE Website_ Metrics"").The course received visits not only from European countries participating in the project but also from other European countries (e.g., Over 300 from the Netherlands, more than 200 from Germany and around a hundred from Finland) and even beyond the European region (e.g., around 200 visits from United States, Mexico, India or Chile respectively, see annex: ""SAVE Website_ Metrics""). The project has been widely disseminated in different regional, national, and international events, such as web, social networks (e.g. posts on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anamgreco_savetraining-schoolsagainstvictimisation-activity-6786374670393331712-esjW), events or conferences (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkH4agmFcJ8&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=AnaMartinaGreco), scientific and popular articles (e.g. https://www.educaciontrespuntocero.com/cursos-online/cursos-victimizacion-infantil/) and TV3 News participation (https://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/telenoticies/els-mestres-podran-detectar-victimes-dabusos-sexuals-gracies-al-save/video/6095620/). Images, texts, and advertising videos have been created about the SAVE project as dissemination tools (Annex: ""Dissemination tool_ Spain_ 1-11; Ireland_1""). Likewise, there have been collaborations with influencers from the educational school world and experts in the field of child victimisation investigation (Annex: ""Dissemination tool_ Spain_ 9-10""). For further information see Annexes (""Dissemination_ Others_ Poland 1; Italy_1""). The participation and the reports obtained in the dissemination phase have indicated a high and successful work.In sum, this project has improved the gap between the school staff members’ needs and the absence of efficient tools to deal with the emotional distress of the students in healthy ways."

"Family Skills project is based on a clear need identified during the planning and design of the intervention activities, of a lack of actions to support positive parenting, based on scientific evidence and innovative learning methodologies, which are considered necessary in the asset of parenting skills. Through an analysis of the needs carried out by the consortium, it emerged that parenting skills, at a socio-political level, have been strictly empathised in cases of high risk, while there is no common strategy and concept of prevention of discomfort, which is based on a strengthening of parenting skills, especially with respect to new parents and new families.In order to overcome these difficulties, the Family Skills project foresees a specific support and training action addressed to public and private operators (as adult educators) called to organize and manage training courses of parenting skills, and to sensitise parents' orientation and motivation to participate.It seems necessary to review the structure and provision of parental and adult educator-training/education, foreseeing cutting-edge solutions, thanks to the use of digital technologies and innovative tools; for this motivation, the training material will be realized for a full online usability, that includes the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) techniques: these training delivery techniques have proved to be, according to the scientific literature of the last years, much more effective in terms of achieving learning outcomes, for being experiential, immersive and influencing the individual's training.Specifically, the objectives of the Family Skills project are:- To help adults (parents, family members, social workers) to acquire the necessary skills to become effective educators;- To support parents in their children's education through learning pathways and empowerment of parental skills (but also of educators, teachers, and adults in general), characterized by interactive and innovative educational kits, which use virtual and immersive reality to foster skills development.- Increasing awareness and knowledge of the needs and development of children and families through audio-visuals and ICT materials, with particular emphasis on virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning.- To promote a public-private network ability of collaboration, to support parenthood through training, social and relational networking, also through the diffusion of self-organizing family models.Directing the results towards these objectives will allow to improve the parenting skills, the so called ""Family Skills"", through an active involvement of parents' groups and, at the same time, strengthening the personal and professional skills of those working in the educational sector. For this motivation our partnership, composed of public and private bodies from Italy, Romania, Belgium and Poland, through the project Family Skills intends to develop 3 intellectual outputs that consist in: the development of guidelines to design the training, aimed at the analysis of new training needs of the operators; in the implementation of a training path integrated with virtual reality and an exercise, through an active ""participation"" of the group of parents that exploits the interaction of the individuals, such as ""partner works"" specific and other activities addressed to the participant needs. The project idea also includes the use of a self-assessment tool, about individual Family Skills, through a digital interface tool. The project aims find a synthesis in an on-site experimentation that involves a group of parents (about 30) from each country, designed and implemented by the operators who will take part in a specific training."

"The goal of project STOP! is to develop new digital methods and content that will help prevent sexual abuse in Europe better. The project provides informal learning opportunities for all who work with children and adolescents.These learning opportunities are expanded and supplemented for professional trainers who will receive new tools and material for their work. Through European cooperation, existing prevention concepts will be incorporated into the participating countries.At the heart of the project is the development of an e-learning platform that is designed to be used by non-professionals as well as trainers in further education. The learning platform should be graphically / artistically appealing and attractive. Anyone who has anything to do with children and adolescents should be able to learn here how to behave correctly, what to do in crisis situations, how to recognize abuse, what the legal situation is, etc. Thematic fields are explored by the partners and prepared pedagogically / didactically for the learning platform. It covers classical areas of prevention work as well as new and innovative approaches. In addition, there is a toolbox for coaches, which arise from the thematic fields and can be used directly for prevention training. A set of videos with interviews with young people completes the project. Here the young people themselves should have the say.The starting point is the ""Lanzarote Convention"" of 2007, the ""European Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse"". The project is explicitly in line with Article 5 (1), which provides awareness and training for all those working in the field of child and youth work.Child abuse is a widespread phenomenon in Europe. 18 million children are estimated to be affected by sexual abuse, according to the current European report on child maltreatment. The European Parliament has explicitly stated in a study that a ""culture of prevention"" is missing at European level.Through European cooperation and the development of an easily accessible prevention tool, the STOPP! Project wants to contribute to counteracting this desideratum.The partners involved are adult education institutions that are either familiar with the development of e-learning tools or active in the field of prevention, (sexual) violence and child protection. Together with an external expert, this group will create the most appropriate and responsible learning and knowledge offers on the topic in this thematically sensitive field. The project includes thematic multiplier events (conferences) in each partner country with a total of 160 participants and a training event with 50 participants, in which the prevention trainers are trained to use the new material and network with the participants and partners.The learning platform and the toolbox should take up the following content (or a selection thereof):Classic topics of prevention work• Comply with children and adolescents in a sensitive way• Sexual abuse and the internet• Gender stereotypes of women and men, boys and girls• What to do if abuse occurs, how do you recognize victims, what happens to the perpetrators, what are the health consequences for the victims?• How can children be strengthened? About no-sayAdvanced / new approaches• Avoiding sexualized and stereotyped language usage• Intercultural aspects• Religions and churches in the discussion about protection against abuse• Internal organization of institutions for children and adolescents• The limits and possibilities of prevention work• The EU Lanzarote Convention on Sexual Abuse• National information and instructions"