[Cyprus] How ENYA works in Cyprus?

The Office of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Cyprus participates in the ENYA project “Let’s Talk Young: Let’s Talk About Violence” with a group of 10 children/young people, who were selected after personal interviews given by a social worker. Children and young people participated in two workshops that were organised on a non-formal methodology with the active participation of the children themselves.

During the first workshop, children and young people had the opportunity to meet, get to know each other and discuss the issue of violence with invited experts on the field. In particular, children were presented with cases that involved different forms of violence, by the 4 professionals, from governmental and non-governmental organisations: the Educational Psychology Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture (school bullying-gender based violence), the Social Welfare Services (poverty as a form of violence), the Future World Center (NGO-violence against children on the move) and the Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family (NGO-Violence against children within the family context).

In the second workshop participants met and interacted with 3 journalists- two from major local newspapers and one from a TV channel. They joined the workshop and assisted children and young people in forming their ideas on how to present on Media their views and messages regarding violence. After that, each newspaper journalist worked with a group of children on their interviews, which were published in the newspapers the following days. The TV journalist discussed with the third group different concepts as to the best way to communicate on television their views and how to explore and use multimedia as a method to raise public awareness on the issue of violence against children.

Afterwards, under the guidance of an applied theatre practitioner and a director, the children designed and produced a short video, dramatising different forms of violence that a child can face and how this affects his/her life. Further on, participants will discuss with the project Coordinators on how to use the specific video to promote their work on TV, internet and social media.

In the following two weeks, participants, in groups of 2, were invited in several TV programs, as well as online programs and had the opportunity to raise their voices on the issue of violence and shared their experiences in the project.

• Regular updates on ENYA activities in Cyprus can be found on young people’s facebook group page here