Mi Sol

What it is and how it works

Mi Sol is an educational program to prevent childhood sexual violence in school settings [6]. The program was also adapted and implemented in the cities of Juliaca and Puno in Perú. It consisted of six to ten sessions for children aged 10–11 and two to three sessions for parents. Each session lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, using a participatory methodology and hands-on workshops [3,4].

The program consists of two components [3,6]:

• Sessions for parents and caregivers. These sessions promoted active family participation in the prevention of child sexual violence. Topics covered include family involvement in intervention processes, the preventive role of the family environment, and the consequences of childhood sexual violence. After delivering a presentation, teachers guided parents through group discussions to deepen their understanding and promote shared reflection on these issues.

   

• Sessions for 5th-grade primary school students. These sessions aimed to strengthen emotional expression, body awareness, and self-esteem in children. Topics include the body and sexuality, identifying good and bad secrets, distinguishing warning signs and discomfort as self-protection mechanisms, the ability to ask for help in risky situations, healthy relationships, developing self-trust, and strategies to prevent harassment and sexual violence through social media. Activities included playing a bingo game featuring characters showing different emotions, engaging students in group discussions, using printed materials and music to support emotional expression, and sending home activities for families to complete together.

The researchers evaluated Mi Sol through a quasi-experimental study involving 49 primary school children in Puno (Sept to Dec 2018) and 48 primary school children in Juliaca (May-June 2019). The evaluations included a pretest, the intervention, and a post-test. To measure students’ knowledge and skills for preventing sexual violence, researchers used a questionnaire developed in a similar study [5]. Prevention knowledge was tested with questions related to awareness, understanding, and recognizing sexual violence, children's rights, and boundaries. Skills items focus on action, decision-making, and practical responses to violence or coercion [5]. The researchers obtained authorization from the school, informed consent from parents or guardians, and assent from the children.

Results in Puno

Results indicate that participation in the program led to a significant improvement in children’s knowledge and skills for preventing sexual violence in the experimental group while there were no significant changes in the control group. 

• In the experimental group, 52% of children demonstrated a moderate level of knowledge and skills in the pre-test, while 48% were at a high level. In the post-test, only 8% remained at a moderate level, and 92% reached a high level of knowledge.
• In contrast, the control group showed no significant change [4].

Results in Juliaca 

Among the children who participated in the program, knowledge about childhood sexual violence improved significantly: the average score rose from 22.9 before the program to 28.3 after. Scores in the control group remained nearly the same.

• Before the intervention, 10.7% of students had low knowledge levels, 39.3% had medium levels, and 50% had high levels of knowledge about childhood sexual violence. After implementation, none showed low knowledge, 35.7% had medium knowledge, and 64.3% demonstrated high knowledge of childhood sexual violence.

Similar patterns were observed in the prevention skills indicator. 

The results demonstrated that the program significantly improved students’ knowledge and skills related to sexual violence prevention, helping protect and alert them to future danger. Moreover, the Mi Sol program in Perú shows that a childhood sexual violence education program developed in one country can be successfully implemented in another with a similar context. This is a valuable and practical example of leveraging existing expertise to scale up evidence-based programming in a region.

This study's findings also encourage the scientific community to promote educational policy development to empower children in vulnerable situations.

Challenges

• One limitation of this study is that it did not measure how well students’ learning was retained over time [4]
• Some teachers showed distrust and/or resistance to delivering the content included in the program [4].

Lessons learned

• Engaging parents, caregivers, and guardians is key to raising awareness about the family’s role in preventing and responding to sexual violence.
• Engaging government and education authorities would be key to making this program scalable.