In 2020, we piloted our prevention methodology with a group of Shama professionals in Hamilton. We initially delivered the 7-hour prevention workshops and then supported the group over six months as they developed their own project. This project involved creating and piloting a workshop for ethnic parents, aimed at helping them develop the skills to protect their children from sexual abuse.
The initiative, titled “Let’s Talk Kids,” was a 3-hour interactive workshop originally developed in English, with the potential for translation into various languages with interpreter support. With support from the Red Cross Hamilton, the Shama group piloted this workshop using interpreters within the Afghan, Syrian, and Burmese refugee communities in Hamilton. Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive.
Through our nationwide prevention work with different communities, we found significant interest in the topic. As a result, we supported several of our prevention partner community groups to translate the workshop into different languages, allowing them to share the materials and key messages within their own communities. Translations included Farsi (in Christchurch), Arabic (in Hamilton), and Korean (delivered in Korean schools held on Saturdays in North Shore, Central Auckland, and South Auckland). Some translations also incorporated cultural elements to better support ethnic parents in understanding the content.
Due to the success and growing demand for this initiative, Shama decided to enhance the workshop materials to enable co-facilitator training for delivery across different regions. In 2024, Shama trained a group of facilitators from diverse ethnic backgrounds to take the workshop across Aotearoa. So far, these facilitators have delivered workshops in Waikato, Oamaru, Invercargill, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Tauranga, and Nelson.To date, a total of 293 people have participated in these workshops, 217 of whom were women. The ethnic backgrounds of participants include Congolese, Syrian, Afghan, Middle Eastern, Colombian, Chinese, Filipino, Fijian, Pakistani, Indian, Japanese, Kenyan, and Vietnamese, among others.
This is the workshop that Shama conducted with a group of Afghan women, organized in collaboration with the Red Cross Hamilton. In the picture, the person speaking is the workshop interpreter. The workshop was facilitated in English, but we used an interpreter to translate the information and deliver it in Afghan (Dari or Pashto, depending on the language spoken).
