Ilya Smirnoff, ChildLine Executive Director, speaks to Church of Christ school and church representatives about child protection. Photo: CWS
CWS continues to partner with The Church of Christ in Thailand to expand child safeguarding measures in churches and schools in several provinces. While it will be some time until the initiative reaches all 1,879 churches, 29 schools and eight hospitals in 22 CCT districts across Thailand, our Child Safeguarding Program Officers, Ponsawan (Cake) Laisuwan and Suchawalee (Bon) Mankhong are now active with the Church’s main Office of Child Protection to work alongside two dozen CCT schools and church districts.
As part of this partnership, CWS is supporting collaboration with like-minded Thai organizations, including ChildLine, which is a prominent national non-government organization with a mission to “provide children in Thailand with trusted and reliable access to protection, health and human services.” Significantly, ChildLine provides much-needed case management support in coordinating with law enforcement, health services and the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security when child safety incidents are reported. Ilya Smirnoff, ChildLine Executive Director, is a long-time ally of the CWS | Church of Christ in Thailand child safeguarding effort, and he joined the September Code of Conduct Writers’ Workshop to share information and perspectives, so Church duty bearers now have a greater understanding of the case referral options in Thailand.
As the Church’s safeguarding initiative grows and strengthens, such partnerships will be increasingly vital in sharing the project’s success and lessons learned with other government, non-government and faith-based organization in Thailand so all can use shared learning to improve their child safeguarding measure.
(For more information please contact LWilson@cwsglobal.org)