dExes - Eliminating Backward Stigma

dExes is an educational program about the differences, characteristics, similarities and other issues regarding gender, applicable and adaptable for young ages, specifically from 4 to 18 years.

dExes is a Sex Education program implemented for students of age four and above. The program is to serve three groups of learners:

From ages four to seven, the students are taught to distinguish impolite touching to loving cuddles, and to know who, why or when such actions can be made. This will be integrated with preschool education.

From ages eight to ten, the students are taught about the biological characteristics of the human body, recognize harassments and self-defense. From this stage onwards, there will be a website where learners engage in activities to study situations through illustration. The site will include pictures, videos, graphs and act as digital textbooks where students interact with the screen.

From ages eleven and above, the full scale of sexual harassments and assaults are taught to students in specific numbers, and students are prepared with knowledge of biological changes of bodies in their age.
Throughout the whole process, the students are encouraged to express emotions through expressions, and all hobbies are allowed if not violating moral standards, regardless of the social evaluation of their gender. The students are taught to not discriminate against anyone, be it because of gender or other status.

dExes aims to solve two main problems through education: the inadequacy of awareness about sexual abuse in children and gender stereotypes.

According to the People’s Public Security Report in 2019, every day in Vietnam, an average of 7 children are sexually abused, and in a span of 5 years from 2015 to 2019, over 6000 harassment cases have been reported. In localities with developed tourism and industrialization, such as some coastal provinces, child sexual abuse tend to occur more frequently. 97% of the criminals are acquaintances of the family, who gained trust from both the victim and the parents. Aside from physical weaknesses that decrease their defensive abilities, assaulted children are often born in complicated family circumstances, resulting in inadequate awareness and making them unable or slow to detect danger. 
Although Vietnamese policymakers promise a strong commitment towards gender equality, based on the imbalance in the sex ratio, the World Population Report 2020 estimates that Vietnam will be short of 40,800 female newborns each year. Men are forced to conceal ‘feminine’ hobbies and personalities by their family at a young age, while women are often depicted as weak and fragile, and are hindered from developing economically and independently. The widespread of sexist articles by the press and early stages of education plays important roles in archetyping feminity and masculinity.

Many children nowadays are either not educated thoroughly about sexual abuse, resulting in unawareness of potential danger or too gullible towards other people, often equating uncomfortable advances as actions of love and care. Aside from obvious physical weakness in comparison to attackers, this contributes to their lowered self-protection. Also, the roots of gender stereotypes are planted into children’s minds by parents and external sources of information at a young age, which causes future twisted viewpoints on gender characteristics and a domino effect of toxic gender evaluation to the next generations. dExes seeks to educate children about sexual issues and gender equality at the students’ earliest stage of absorbing information, when the knowledge taught will be imprinted and will affect the students strongly. By influencing the students at a young age and continue to educate them throughout their maturity process, teaching the students about matters regarding sexual assaults on scales suitable for their age group and encouraging them to express their personal beliefs regardless of gender (and other status), the problems are solved at core.

Children are safe when themselves have the knowledge and skills to protect their body. This is a challenging problem, especially in preschool ages. A preschool teacher said that she and many other teachers are struggling in conveying sex education to children, using easy definition for the body parts, how to organize activities, etc.

More than half of the women interviewed (52%) agreed with at least 1 reason or situation that it is acceptable for a husband to  his wife, for example, that the wife was "unfaithful" (45%) or "not taking care of children" (27%). These views are more strongly supported by women with low levels of education and by women living in rural areas. According to some experts, one of the causes of gender stereotypes and gender inequality leading to gender-based violence comes from women's accepted thoughts and concepts. Many women have the misconception that husbands and boyfriends have the right to make decisions and have the right to abuse their wives.

We are still on the stage of digging deeper into the problem and the existing situation in our community. We have created a program but it has not yet been implemented and tested.

The students will be interacting with the teachers and the lesson via a website. This site acts as a digital textbooks, where the subject will be divided into three age groups, similar to the division of students: From ages six to seven, there will be a large amount of pictures, infographics, colors and animated cartoons of situations they are going to study about, to optimize their interest in the subject. From ages eight to ten, the animations will be lessened and the pictures will be reduced, although still plenty of illustration, and additions of photographs will be made. From ages eleven and above, the pictures and photographs are merely evidence or supporting proofs of the topic, and graphs and paragraphs of information are prioritized.

Currently, we make learning paths for about 5000 people, including students from preschool to high school. It is expected that in the coming years, specifically next year, if the number of participants increases, we will expand the program to a maximum of 10,000 people. In the following years, after our solution has been included in the school curriculum, we will increasingly expand this project to many different cities and countries.

Sex Education encompasses a wide scope of topics and discussions. For the next year, we will be focusing on the 4 main aspects of sex education based on the needs assessment conducted in our pilot schools. We also aim to ensure that we have a strong curriculum for our program so that it can be used for the upcoming years. This innovation is new in most schools so promotional and marketing campaigns will also be done to involve more members of the community to take part.

Our program will also help address the UN SGD target 4.7 wherein by 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development specifically in the aspect of gender equality. The program is indented to address the diffrent issues faced by the youth in terms of understand of sex education. Other UN SDG targets health, equality, quality education and comunity awareness will also be catered by our program.

The barriers that we might be facing in accomplishing the goal will be the finances and manpower. Our innovation requires a detailed process and it also tackles a sensitive issue so everything must be properly taken into consideration. Experts joining us for consultation would be a great heal that is why in the succeeding stages we would love to involve them to further enhance our concept.

Although three of our members are freshmen, and all of us are in high school and did not participate or lead any project regarding this issue before, we are willing to learn and move forward towards the success of our solution.

Gender stereotypes and stigma has been a problem of women's life, and this is partly the reason why many women are hindered from developing economically and independently. With dExes, we aim to abolish the toxic stereotypes and social evaluation of femininity. We will use the reputation and recognition we earn with the prize as a support for us, both financially and to gain accepteance for our program.