Digital roundtable from the Institute for the Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence at the University of Bonn

The event brought together an international community of child safety experts. Ivanka Rudakevych, head of projects and programs at UCU's Center for the Dignity of the Child, participated. She shared her experience in the area of church.

On October 16, the Digital Roundtable was organized by IPA - the Institute for Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence at the University of Bonn (Germany). This institute promotes the protection of children, adolescents, youth and vulnerable adults from sexual violence in institutions and cooperates with the Catholic Church on violence prevention. The purpose of the digital roundtable is to establish connections at the national and international levels.

Ivanka Rudakevych, head of projects and programs at UCU's Center for the Dignity of the Child, took part in the meeting. She spoke about the work of the Center in the direction of the church. Formations of various levels for clergy, religious, and laity on the prevention of violence against children: training at the level of dioceses, one-day trainings for priests, first and second level schools, formations for delegates to accept applications. The participants of the roundtable were interested to hear about the International Project of Eastern European Catholic Churches on SafeGuarding, which has been translated into 5 foreign languages and was initiated by the Center for Child Dignity.

She mentioned the challenges of the war and our response to these challenges - training for the clergy of the UGCC abroad, as well as with the support of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Ukraine. The round table “God. War. Man” roundtable. The Child Friendly Church project, which consisted of practical workshops for parishes to help them create a child-friendly environment and a research study that examines the concept of a child-friendly church, which continues to this day.

Ivanka Rudakevych familiarized the participants with the methodological developments of the UCU Center for the Dignity of the Child for the church environment and gave a general description of the context of the post-communist past and ways to overcome the challenges associated with it.

It was a good opportunity to share our experience in preventing violence against children with international experts.