Assess yourself with Mídete and change things up for nonviolence
This campaign’s actions are aimed at modifying social behaviors that generate violent repercussions in the lives of children and adolescents.
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If there’s one word that’s inherently linked to Mídete, a Cuban campaign against violence in childhood and adolescence, it is CHANGE: “The act, process or result of changing. Relating to the transformation of something or someone”.
We are talking about changes that are more than necessary when 41.6% of a total of 8,603 children and adolescents between 1 and 14 years of age have been subjected to some violent method of discipline. They’re necessary because in 4 out of 10 homes violent methods such as physical punishment and psychological aggression are combined to correct behavior, and because in one third of those homes children are scolded with offensive words or disqualifications.
They’re necessary because gender-based violence is cloaked in everyday life and separates girls and boys in terms of rights and opportunities. They’re necessary because families do not know the signs of child sexual abuse, how to prevent it or through which mechanisms to report it. They’re necessary because social media generate scenarios of threatening violence in childhood and adolescence. In each of these situations it is necessary to assess oneself and implement change.
Assess yourself with Mídete for change
The didactic, educational and communication resources proposed by a campaign such as Mídete support processes of social and behavioral change, while questioning people and their indifference, acceptance or naturalization of violent practices in the upbringing of children and adolescents.
They question the tolerance to online violence and its uncritical reproduction, as well as the sexist patterns that persist in the socialization processes of children and adolescents (in the family, in schools, in communities, in the media and on virtual platforms). Since UNICEF Cuba launched this initiative in 2021, violence affecting children and adolescents, including child sexual abuse, has become more visible in the country.
For change to happen it is necessary to go beyond behaviors, starting from apprehended truths, rooted beliefs and perceptions. Mídete acts on perceptions such as: Adults in charge of children and adolescents may use violent parenting styles or methods to discipline them. Boys need to know how to defend themselves, be strong and know how to interact in the street; while girls need to be calmer, docile and homely. Violence against children and adolescents in Cuba is not a problem.
Around these perceptions or imaginaries there are many beliefs that need to be transformed: Violence and love do not coexist in families. Child abuse is only committed by people with mental illnesses, with psychological disorders or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is necessary to use certain methods (“heavy hand”) in order not to lose control over children and adolescents. Mothers and fathers were also beaten in their childhood and this did not affect them.
In a context where these beliefs are normalized, where authoritarian and hierarchical parenting styles are justified, in the midst of an adult-centered and patriarchal culture, the change in favor of the right of every child and adolescent to live free of violence is a road with many obstacles, but the challenge of “educating, loving and living together without violence” is worth the effort.
Allies for change
In the course of the Mídete campaign, projects have been identified that focus their actions on educational and recreational activities for children and adolescents; others accompany families in their upbringing dynamics. Contacting their coordination and work teams and exchanging on the campaign’s axes has resulted in a fruitful union. Some of these are Golden Kids and Tu Taller.
These initiatives have not only appropriated the messages of Mídete, but have applied them across many of their actions; through artistic creations by children; in workshops on the responsible use of social media and parental control; or with tools for respectful upbringing and on children’s rights.
Tu taller
This is a Local Development Project based in Havana that, from the perspective of the visual arts, connects children with issues of their interest. At its headquarters, they organized a creative workshop under the Mídete call for the production of animated videos using the stop motion technique, in which the participating children identify situations of violence in their environment and possible solutions to them. “Let’s change the story” is the name given to this set of animations, which have served to shine a light on the problem of violence and start a dialogue in cultural events, television programs or in the classrooms of the children involved in this creative experience.
As a result of this process, a methodological guide emerged with didactic resources to stimulate future spaces of collective construction on this problem.
For Malcolm Baró Munder, coordinator of this initiative, one way to encourage change is to share the campaign messages on the project’s social media, which includes a WhatsApp group to interact with the children’s families.
“In the daily activities of the workshop, the theme of nonviolence and the formation of a gender culture is used as part of the integral development of children and adolescents. The infants are direct beneficiaries of our service, but the rest of the family is the one who decides their participation. Therefore, issues of respectful upbringing are fundamental in our daily practice.”
“Also the responsible use of social media will be included in a workshop for adolescents as part of an action to implement UNICEF’s innovation and expression kits,” Baró said.
The changes are visible through learning, much of which happens at a personal level in the very coordinators of the workshops they teach. “It has changed our way of understanding teaching, which is increasingly more respectful and more similar to those who receive it. In turn, it provides the creation of a support and activism network in the construction of the society we want,” concluded the head of Tu taller.
Golden Kids
This Local Development Project dedicated to education in entrepreneurship during childhood has strengthened its partnerships with the Mídete campaign through events, participatory actions and workshops.
The gender and inclusion approach runs across the design of their activities, so it is very practical for them to reflect the themes of the campaign. The greatest change perceived is in the gender roles of both girls and boys and their families, as they approach entrepreneurial projects and professions from a non-judgmental and non-sexist perspective.
In this way, they offer the freedom for everyone to be what they dream of, without conforming to cultural patterns or constructs about what is feminine or masculine. “From the processes of exchanging with families while the children are in the workshop, we also encourage respectful upbringing, parental control and the responsible use of social Media,” said Adriana Diaz, founder of the project.
Golden Kids, as well as the Tu Taller team, were part of the Mídete Festival in April 2023, at the Entimbalao Project Park in Havana. On that day we celebrated the two years of the campaign and the opportunity to articulate diverse initiatives, which are promoting the same set of changes as Mídete from their respective fields.
With Golden Kids we also shared one of the summer workshops on responsible use of social media, aimed at teenagers and their parents, and Mídete was inserted in November in the anniversary party of this project, at the Paseo del Prado, in Old Havana.
Reaching the communities
In accordance with the theory of change set out in the Mídete campaign, the strategies, channels or ways for convening and feedback have been diversified and complemented. This has made it possible to influence more children, adolescents, parents, other caregivers and key actors in the participatory processes that promote respectful upbringing and the right of children and adolescents to grow up without violence.
In addition to the links with projects dedicated to children and adolescents, ties have been strengthened with the media and other community initiatives, such as the Entimbalao project in Havana and the Afroatenas project in Matanzas.
With the help of their leaders, the campaign reached the communities where they are located in order to share messages that help to question and transform imaginaries, social norms and behaviors that sustain violence against children and adolescents from their own ways of doing things.
If there was one thing these actions had in common, it was that Mídete brought together other institutional actors and initiatives such as the Respectful Upbringing and Escaramujo projects, both of the University of Havana, to organize a joint space for dialogue and closeness with adolescents and families in charge of raising children.
Beyond a specific intervention, Mídete seeks to open up opportunities for more in-depth and systematic work. In this line, having the Kits for adolescents as resources available to these community projects has been a wise decision that allows for a more relaxed process of reflection, expression and action for nonviolence from within the neighborhood.
In the Entimbalao Park, a wall was taken over to leave a record through a mural that recalls the importance of self-empowerment to assess oneself against violence. Another key strategy followed by the campaign has been the joint work with institutions linked to the UNICEF Cuba program, such as the Center for Sociological and Psychological Research (CIPS), the Center for Youth Studies or the Center a+ espacios adolescentes of the Office of the Historian of the City.
In addition, joint actions have been established with the cast of soap operas and television series, including the popular show Calendario, so that their protagonists replicate and share the Mídete messages.
Small changes that mobilize
At the gates of its final stage, Mídete is approaching a crucial moment of learning to promote changes that benefit the well-being and development of children and adolescents in Cuba. Alliances, meeting spaces, an increasingly diverse voice and, above all, the generation and socialization of evidence are essential to address such a complex and culturally rooted problem as violence.
Social research is a highly valuable resource for making the invisible visible. Mídete has strived to systematize studies on violence affecting children and adolescents and also to understand the links between it and gender-based violence.
Knowing the causes and consequences of practices and beliefs that sustain any form of violence against children is a first step in recognizing the relevance of acting in all possible areas to prevent and respond, in a coordinated manner, to situations that endanger the psychological or physical well-being of even a single child or adolescent.
On this path, UNICEF Cuba’s Mídete campaign calls for small changes in daily practices to drive more lasting transformations for the right of every child to grow up free from mistreatment, sexual abuse, discrimination, bullying and any other expression of violence.
