Bob Cunningham, President & CEO; The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
Today The Brand Called You welcomes a very inspiring individual who works towards the welfare of children. We are privileged to be joined by Bob Cunningham today. Bob is the President and CEO of The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Podcast
Overview
“Every three minutes, technologies detected an image of child sexual abuse material online”
In a world that highly relies on technology for survival, we often sideline and ignore the downsides and threats that modern age technology poses. Internet scams, online harassment, abuse as well as cyber thefts and crimes are taking place at an alarming rate. While every internet user is threatened by the dangers of these cyber platforms, the most vulnerable population however, is the children. Online Child Abuse and harassment is a very major problem that is evident in almost every country of the world. Apart from child abuse- child abduction and child violence is also a major global issue.
Children are faced with these atrocities every day and the most shocking part is that most of the perpetrators are either a known relative or parent of the victim!
According to a report by the World Health Organisation, nearly 3 in 4 children (or 300 million children) aged 2-4 years regularly suffer physical punishment and/or psychological violence at the hands of parents and caregivers.
This highly disturbing and alarming evidence has led to a number of organisations to take strict measures in order to protect children and take action against the perpetrators.
Today The Brand Called You welcomes one such very inspiring individual who works towards the welfare of children. We are privileged to be joined by Bob Cunningham today.
Bob is the President and CEO of The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Earlier, he was Executive Director of Robert Louis Stevenson School and Purnell School. Bob also closely works with child protection law enforcers of Kerala.
In conversation with our host Ashutosh Garg, Bob shares his story and the many experiences he has gained on this extraordinary path. The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children has done some absolutely commendable work and continues to battle child sexual abuse, child abduction etc. It focuses on stakeholder engagement between government, industry and professionals who are out there spending their lives and careers working to protect children from online sexual abuse and sexual exploitation.
They are building capacity around the world for countries to have a self assessment with respect to the child protection protocols and laws of the country. The centre helps countries to learn about what other countries are doing on the matter and also share their own strategies.
Bob explains that this entire system is focused on one single goal which is –
to form a tighter safety net for kids around the world
Bob shares that the issue of child sexual abuse and online abuse are not just regional or limited to a specific country. He explains that the problem is truly and alarmingly global and it can only be solved by more and more people coming together, and spreading awareness!
He also shares some statistics of The United States that displayed 22 million reports of online child sexual abuse imagery. While talking about the dangers that children are open to, through the internet, Bob also explains how parents can help in making internet platforms safer for their kids.
Bob strongly believes in making our environments safer for children all over the world. He believes that child abuse is a human challenge and needs to be addressed with humanity!
Tune in to know about the amazing work that Bob is doing to make the world a better and much safer place for us to exist!
#ChildAbuse #ChildProtection #ChildSexualAbuse #OnlineAbuse #OnlineHarassment #ChildSecurity #Abuse #Exploitation #ChildExploitation
Profile
Non-profit leader who believes we must be able to do better than this for children
