Child protection is everyone's responsibility. That is the message at the heart of a half-day training delivered by Epic Arts' Social Work and Child Protection Team in May 2026 at the Epic Arts Centre in Kampot. Forty-seven participants, children, youth, caregivers and staff, came together to deepen their understanding of children's rights, recognise the signs of abuse and learn how to take action when children are at risk.
The numbers tell part of the story. Ten children, eight children with disabilities, five young people with disabilities, twenty caregivers and four Epic Arts staff attended the session. More than half were female. But the real story is what happened in the room: the conversations, the questions, the moments when participants realised they already had more power to protect children than they thought.
Why This Training Matters
Cambodia has made significant progress in child protection legislation, but awareness at community level remains uneven. Children with disabilities face disproportionate risks. They are more likely to experience abuse and less likely to have access to reporting mechanisms that work for them. For Epic Arts, whose community includes children and young people with a wide range of disabilities, child safeguarding is not a box to tick. It is a commitment built into everything we do.
This training was designed to bridge the gap between policy and practice, giving participants not just knowledge, but the confidence and tools to act.
What Participants Learned
The session opened with a foundational question: who is a child? The answer, anyone under the age of 18, is straightforward, but the implications are far reaching. From there, the training built systematically through the four core rights guaranteed to every child under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: the right to survival, the right to development, the right to protection and the right to participation.
These rights apply to all children without exception, including children with disabilities. That point was made explicitly and repeatedly throughout the training, because for many participants it was new information.
The team then turned to the reality of child abuse: what it looks like, where it happens and who is responsible. Physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and neglect were each examined in turn, with concrete examples drawn from everyday life. Abuse does not only happen in extreme circumstances or distant places. It can happen at home, at school, in the community and increasingly online. Participants learned to recognise the signs across all four categories and to understand the lasting effects abuse can have on a child's health, development and wellbeing.
One of the most important sessions addressed a question that often goes unasked: who actually has the obligation to protect children? The answer the group arrived at was broad and deliberate. Government, local authorities, teachers, community members, neighbours, families, children themselves, NGO partners and donors. Child protection is not the exclusive domain of specialists or authorities. It belongs to everyone.
Learning Together
The training was deliberately interactive. Rather than delivering information top down, Epic Arts' Social Work Team facilitated group discussions and activities that drew on participants' own knowledge and experience. One group discussion asked participants to define child protection in their own words before the formal definition was introduced. The responses were thoughtful and grounded: protect children's health, keep them safe from dangerous places, make sure they can go to school, don't cause them harm.
The formal definition, that child protection is the prevention of and response to abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence against children, affirmed what participants already understood intuitively. The training gave language and structure to knowledge that communities already hold.
Across all the structured content, the session returned repeatedly to the relationship between adults and children as the foundation of any protective environment. Children need trusted adults. Adults need the knowledge and confidence to be trustworthy.
Knowing How to Report
Understanding abuse is one thing. Knowing what to do about it is another. A dedicated session walked participants through the reporting and referral process for child protection concerns, including the structure of the Commune Committee for Women and Children, which brings together commune chiefs, police, school directors, health centre representatives, village chiefs and NGO partners to coordinate responses at local level.
Participants also learned that reporting is not complicated or out of reach. Anyone, child or adult, can call Epic Arts' ChildSafe hotline: 010 333 296 or 088 9333 296. The line operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Knowing the number exists, and feeling confident enough to use it, is itself a form of protection.
What Changed
By the end of the session, participants demonstrated increased understanding across all areas covered: children's rights, forms of abuse, protection responsibilities and reporting mechanisms. Children and young people left with greater confidence in identifying trusted adults and knowing how to seek help. Caregivers left better equipped to recognise risk and respond appropriately. And across all groups, the training strengthened the sense of shared responsibility that effective child protection depends on.
For participants with disabilities, children, youth and caregivers alike, the training offered something additional: the explicit message that protection applies to them equally, that their safety matters and that the systems designed to protect children are designed to protect them too.
Every Child. Every Community.
Child protection does not happen through policy alone. It happens when a caregiver recognises a warning sign and knows who to call. It happens when a child feels safe enough to speak to a trusted adult. It happens when communities understand that silence is not neutrality. It is a choice that leaves children unprotected.
Epic Arts is committed to building that understanding, one training at a time. This session was made possible through the generous support of Give A Hand, whose partnership enables Epic Arts to expand child safeguarding work across Kampot and beyond.
If you have concerns about a child's safety, call the Epic Arts ChildSafe hotline: 010 333 296 | 088 9333 296, available 24/7.