In 2003, a UNICEF re­port stat­ed that an es­ti­mat­ed 3,500 chil­dren die of abuse be­fore reach­ing the age of 15 years, each year. These and oth­er sta­tis­tics on child sex­u­al abuse are far too fright­en­ing for many to face, but some­one must face the grow­ing prob­lem. The In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies' St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus has em­barked on a re­search project geared at spread­ing aware­ness of the sex­u­al abuse that hun­dreds of chil­dren suf­fer through­out the Caribbean.

They have brought their mes­sage to schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go and St An­tho­ny's Col­lege has em­braced the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in this aware­ness dri­ve. The walls of St An­tho­ny's Col­lege have be­come a mur­al in progress. There, chil­dren paint mes­sages of hope for vic­tims of child abuse while po­ems and posters adorn the school's gym­na­si­um.One stu­dent read a po­em as his friends sup­por­t­ive­ly cheered: B-Bet­ter days will come. E-En­joy a new life, free from harm... L -Love your­self, acros­ti­cal­ly call­ing on us all to Be­lieve. An­oth­er stu­dent sang Michael Jack­son's Heal the World with teach­ers, stu­dents and guests join­ing in song.

At this school even the wa­ter rock­ets launched sport­ed the un­mis­take­able blue and white ted­dy bear that is the cause's icon, and a stu­dent look­ing on was in­spired to con­struct a Web page to spread aware­ness.Oth­ers have hung notes of love and sup­port writ­ten on cut-out ted­dy bears. Even to­day this is the scene at the school af­ter its Break the Si­lence ral­ly on June 3. In the af­ter­math, one teacher took time to re­flect and ad­mit­ted,

"It was a very emo­tion­al jour­ney." For oth­er teach­ers it was grat­i­fy­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing be­side the stu­dents, see­ing them pas­sion­ate about a cause that af­fects them. Stu­dents chimed in that, for them, the great­est thing was feel­ing that they fi­nal­ly had a voice. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the school's ad­min­is­tra­tion re­flect­ed "It is good that we can em­pathise ... and give these chil­dren a voice. It al­so gave me a chance to share these chil­dren's pain."By con­sid­er­ing the plight of the in­no­cent chil­dren in our so­ci­ety who have been vic­tims of child sex­u­al abuse, St An­tho­ny's Col­lege hopes to be bet­ter able to help them heal.