Child Protection Orientation & Self-Assessment of City/ Municipality/ Barangay was conducted on March 16, 2017 at Legend Villas Hotel, Mandaluyong City. This activity was headed and facilitated by Save the Children led by its Project Officer for Child Protection Ms. Jerly Mae Villanada and Staff in partnership with DSWD-NCR and DILG-NCR.   This one-day orientation and self-assessment is to strengthen local child protection mechanisms particularly the Local Council for the Protection of Children (LCPC) and Barangay Council for the Protection of Children (BCPC) in the prevention and response of child protection cases and the creation and implementation of child protective services.

Ms. Villanada initially discussed with focus on the importance of child protection, how to protect children from different abuses, child protection work & systems, local preventive & responsive services, skilled child protection workforce and Save the Children initiatives/ strategies in protecting children’s rights.

DSWD Social Welfare Specialist for Children/ RCWC Focal Person Ms. Glenda M. Derla presented the 24 Child-Friendly Barangay Indicators and assessment tools used to evaluate a Child-Friendly City/ Municipality/ Barangay towards achieving a child-friendly community through the three (3) steps strategy: 1) Local Governance Audit, 2) Seal of Child-Friendly Local Governance and 3) Presidential Award for Child-Friendly Municipality/ City.

Barangay Child Protection Self-Assessment paper was distributed to the three participating LGUs to conduct self-assessment of the present functionality and needs of child protection committee and this assessment paper sets a plan for creating/ strengthening child protection committee in their respective cities/ municipality/ barangay. Before the end of the activity, the participants expressed their pledge of “Para sa Bata, Ako ay ____”  to show their commitment to promote the protection of children in their community. ###