Child Rights Awareness Campaign
Theme: Every Child Matters — Protecting Childhood, Preserving Dignity
Proposed period: November 2026 Proposed location: Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria Event type: Community sensitisation and child-protection advocacy Target audience: Children, parents, caregivers, teachers, traditional and religious leaders, youth groups, community representatives, and child-protection stakeholders.
Event Overview
The CRARN Child Rights Awareness Campaign is a proposed community-based initiative designed to raise awareness about children’s rights, promote safe childhoods, and encourage communities to prevent abuse, neglect, exploitation, discrimination, and harmful practices against children.
The campaign will create opportunities for community members to understand their responsibilities towards children, recognise situations that threaten children’s welfare, and learn appropriate ways to seek assistance and report concerns.
Building on CRARN’s child-protection mission, the campaign will encourage a shift from silence and stigma towards compassion, accountability, early intervention, and collective responsibility.
Event Objectives
- Promote awareness: Improve understanding of children’s fundamental rights, including protection, education, healthcare, identity, and participation.
- Prevent abuse: Help participants recognise child abuse, neglect, exploitation, and other safeguarding risks.
- Challenge harmful beliefs: Encourage informed, compassionate responses to children affected by stigma, accusations, exclusion, or harmful cultural practices.
- Strengthen community responsibility: Engage parents, community leaders, teachers, and faith leaders in protecting children.
- Encourage reporting and referral: Explain safe, appropriate ways to seek help from relevant child-protection services.
- Build partnerships: Identify potential collaborators to support sustained child-protection awareness and intervention.
Key Campaign Activities
Proposed Programme of Activities
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 9:00–9:30 AM | Registration and welcome |
| 9:30–9:45 AM | Opening prayer or reflection and introduction |
| 9:45–10:15 AM | CRARN presentation: Understanding children’s rights |
| 10:15–11:00 AM | Awareness talk: Recognising and preventing child abuse |
| 11:00–11:15 AM | Health break |
| 11:15 AM–12:00 PM | Community dialogue and questions |
| 12:00–12:30 PM | Child-friendly learning activities |
| 12:30–1:00 PM | Referral information, commitments, and closing |
The programme can be adjusted to suit the community, available resources, and children’s participation needs.
Expected Outcomes
By the end of the campaign, CRARN aims to achieve the following:
- Increased awareness of child rights and child-protection responsibilities among participants.
- Improved understanding of how to recognise and respond to safeguarding concerns.
- Greater willingness among community stakeholders to challenge harmful practices and discrimination against children.
- Improved knowledge of appropriate child-protection reporting and referral pathways.
- Identification of potential community advocates and partner organisations for follow-up activities.
These are intended outcomes; actual results should be documented and reported after implementation.
Child Safeguarding and Ethical Standards
Because the campaign concerns vulnerable children, CRARN should ensure that:
- Participation by children is safe, voluntary, age-appropriate, and accessible.
- Photographs, videos, and personal stories are collected only with appropriate consent and safeguarding review.
- No child is publicly identified as a survivor or subjected to questioning that could cause distress.
- Sensitive disclosures are handled confidentially by designated safeguarding personnel.
- Referral information is verified before distribution.
- Children are not exposed to public debate, stigma, or confrontation over allegations of witchcraft or other harmful accusations
SAM ITAUMA President & Founder
Sam Ikpe Itauma is the president and founder of the Child’s Right and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN), and the CEO of Itauma Foundation (IFOUND). He started rescuing children considered as pariah when he was a student in the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He has a very strong aversion for the act of branding children and older people as witches and wizards. Itauma used his school allowance to feed children rejected and abandoned by families for fear of being witchcraft-possessed.