A platform to safeguard children’s bodies

Dhineli has also used her platform to reach out and educate parents and their children about safeguarding children’s bodies. As a concerned parent, seeing the number of incidents involving child abuse, sexual assault and murder over the past few weeks hitting the headlines, especially the incident where the victim was only 18 months old, she felt it was vitally important to focus on this little-talked about issue.

“It wasn’t very long ago that my boys were that exact age. It took me a while to process it all in my head and I wanted to find a way to make my boys understand their private parts,” she says explaining that as children learn through visuals, she created a template to help educate them. “I thought a video on child protection, showing parents and explaining to them how easy and important it is to educate children would have a larger impact than just typing out a post,” she adds.

The child protection video that she did garnered over 6000 views on both Instagram and Facebook and has been shared by many people and now even has Sinhala and Tamil translations to make it accessible to a wider audience.

When asked about the stigma surrounding open conversations on child abuse Dhineli believes it is the duty of a parent to have that difficult conversation with their children regardless of what society thinks because they owe it to them.

“I personally don’t think educating children on these matters is a taboo. I think the more children learn from home, the less awkward they would be to open up to you if something was to happen. Be open minded. Be that safe place for your child to be able to discuss difficult things. Be honest about these things because the stats are real,” she says, urging parents to be mindful of the role they need to play in safeguarding their children.