Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence (BTS) is a Non-Government Organization established and run by a group of compassionate activists committed to combat Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in Bangladesh. It has been working since 1994 throughout the country to address CSA issues from community to government level. Child Sexual Abuse is a very delicate issue with less exposure in the context of Bangladesh. It’s a social phenomenon which directly or indirectly affects most of the children in our society in a very subtle manner. Sexual abuse is probably the most traumatizing event in a child’s experience. BTS, therefore, is working on raising awareness of Child Sexual Abuse and its protection by the adults. Children from every level of the society are threatened with the chance of being sexually abused by different kinds of perpetrators. As the issue is highly sensitive, initially it was really difficult to conduct programs in the field. Once the sessions started, the adults of the community felt the importance and requested to continue sessions with them as well as their children. Being inspired with such an experience, BTS started the project named “Protecting girls & boys from Sexual Abuse” Mission: To sensitizes and capacitate both supply and demand-side actors to protect children and women from all forms of abuse and violation of rights and fulfil the requirements for realization of their innate potentials. Vision: A society that protects the rights of children and women and value their views. Background BTS is a non-profit, non-political organization which began its journey in 1994 with the aim of prevent and stop all forms of violence against women and children. Considering the constitutional mandate, BTS has been operating the organizational program and management by the leadership of women. From the inception to till now the female person has been leading the organization as Executive Director is a woman and a female person is also serving as the Chairperson of the organization. It is mentionable that now the organization has 55% female staff out of total staffs. Breaking the Silence has longstanding experience of mobilizing and supporting civil society movements to promote and protect the rights of children and women. The organization is working to mobilize community people especially the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples against abuse, sexual abuse, exploitation and violence issues through generating their knowledge and capacities to ensure the protection of children and women and developed a community-based model. BTS has a long track record of reducing VAWG through community involvement and gender awareness. Actually, BTS emphasizes empowering the children and women through their meaningful participation. BTS has the proven track record to generate models and accelerate it through advocacy initiatives. The program of the organization has guided the time-bound strategic plan. According to the organization’s constitution and legal entitlement, BTS has the mandate to work with the community in all districts of Bangladesh for the children (rural, urban, slum, street, refugee, migrated, and ethnic minority, youths and women especially poor and marginalized community both victim/survivor and at risk group. Besides, BTS gives important to Family members, community members and different stakeholders including government official, Local Elected Bodies, Law Enforcement agencies, Community Based Organizations, Civil Society organizations, Professional groups (teacher, psychologist, doctor, lawyers) as secondary target group who have a crucial role in creating enabling environment for children and women within the family as well as society. Organizational structure and Management General Assembly: BTS is led by a group of members and they give their overall guidance on different policy related issues and provide their voluntary services to function the organization. BTS has 33 members General Assembly and 22 members are women out of total members. The General Assembly is the final decision making authority platform of the organization. The General Assembly of the organization usually meets once a year in the annual meeting. But the General Assembly meeting may be convened at any time in case of emergency.