Down to Zero / SUFASEC – Philippines SUMMARY: In the Philippines, the continuing advancement of technological products and services puts children at greater risk of online sexual exploitation. They are, for example, more likely to face online sexual solicitation, grooming and coercion to perform sex acts during live streams. Plan International will work together with alliance members Child Rights Coalition-Asia (CRC-Asia), ECPAT Philippines, and Terre des Hommes (TdH) Netherlands in a three year programme. Since March 1st 2023, Plan International is working with children and youths, parents and community leaders, actors in the child protection system, government, and businesses in Manilla City and Dasmarinas. We work on changing social and gender norms that contribute to the sexual exploitation of children in the Philippines, on improving the protective environment through better quality and coordination of SRHR and child protection services, and to localize a newly-passed law to criminalize online sexual abuse and exploitation. This activity forms part of the Step Up the Fight Against Sexual Exploitation of Children (SUFASEC) programme. The programme will run in 12 countries in Latin America and South and South East Asia. 
In the Philippines root causes include harmful social and gender norms. The common perception that female sexuality needs to be controlled and that girls and women should not experience sexual pleasure are deep-rooted and serve as a driver of harmful practices. Masculine norms and violence are linked to that. Boys are often raised and even encouraged to use violence as a way of asserting their masculinity, conforming to socially recognised manhood, and reinforcing patriarchal power. Much violence remains hidden and children are often unable or unwilling to report acts of violence against them for fear of retribution. This is due to pressure and lack of support from parents and other adults, and due to mistrust in corrupt or poorly trained authorities and service providers. This is particularly true for sexual violence, where survivors and their families, especially boys, often face shame and stigma when coming forward. Root causes also include many children’s inability to build social assets that are essential to their protection, families’ economic hardship and exposure to negative shocks such as unemployment, illness or death within the family, or natural disasters. Urbanization and migration can contribute to children’s risk of exposure to SEC, particularly when family separation is involved or where children are migrating for work to support household income needs. The programme will work towards the following long-term impact: “Children in all of their diversity are better protected from sexual exploitation.” 

This will be reached through three interlinking objectives: 
1.	Children, youth and their communities successfully challenge social norms and harmful practices related to SEC 
2.	Children and youth have access to and are supported by strengthened assets and protective environments 
3.	Children and civil society meaningfully participate in holding duty bearers, including government and local authorities, accountable to their obligations towards improved (implementation of) laws, policies, and systems.

Social norms and harmful practices are key drivers of SEC. Social norm change begins at home, and for children, youth and their communities to challenge these norms, they must exercise high levels of agency and autonomy over their own bodies and lives. To the extent that children and adolescents recognize themselves as subjects of rights, they can also better understand SRHR as fundamental, and both children and youth in general, as well as victims of SEC, can aspire to exercise a healthy sexuality that includes respect for their personal integrity and decisions about their bodies. To the extent that they are recognized as subjects of rights, all children and youth are also able to demand access to inclusive protection services that both duty bearers and co-responsible parties can provide. This agency can be supported through positive parenting, strong family ties and supportive community members. Acting together, children, their caregivers and communities, can achieve meaningful change in how all children engage with and are valued by society. 

SEC can be reduced, and its impact appropriately mitigated through access to appropriate assets and through provision of protective environments for children. Economic resilience is a key means of mitigating against monetary drivers of SEC. Children need access to child-centered, inclusive and locally available protection and SRHR information and services, delivered and received without stigma. With so many varied actors involved in protection and referral mechanisms it is important that such services are delivered in a holistic and coordinated manner. By supporting the specialized care and reintegration services that CSOs provide to SEC victims, it is possible to strengthen the restitution of their rights and integrity, especially in contexts where the role of the government in child-friendly and inclusive service provision is still weak. The SUFASEC programme in the Philippines builds on the Alliance’s collective achievements to date, scaling up the 2016- 2020 Down to Zero (DtZ), 2020-2021 Voice for Change (VfC), and 2021 – 2022 Building Back Better (BBB) programme. This allows the Alliance to effectively address SEC in the continuously evolving context. Plan International Philippines joined the Down to Zero alliance during the BBB programme and brought to the country team a rich experience of working with large Internet Service Providers, schools, children and youth, local communities, government at local and national level, CSO networks, and service providers. Plan International Philippines continues to do so along with a focus on gender transformative programming, a strong understanding of intersectionality and changing social and gender norms.
Other projects that are linked are
1.	Safer Kids Philippines, funded by UNICEF, a study to inform localized social and behaviour change communication strategies against online sexual exploitation of children (2022 – 2023)
2.	Systems Approach for Ensuring Online Safety and Empowerment of Children and young People (SAFE Online). Funded by the EU, the action promotes empowerment of vulnerable children and youths to demand prevention and response against OSEC and online violence and their meaningful participation in policy and program development and local planning processes (2022 – 2024)
3.	Cyber-Safe Spaces for Children and Youth in the cities of Manila and Quezon City. Empowering children and youths with cyber safety skills; educating parents, social service providers and duty-bearers on OSEC, and enabling local industries to proactively prevent OSEC. The key target group (and final beneficiaries) of the programme are girls and boys up to 18 years old, who are victims and survivors and those at risk of SEC. We will mostly work with them through children and youth groups. Under the 3 outcome areas the following intermediate outcomes will be achieved:

1.Parents and caregivers exercise positive parenting and strengthen family ties 
•	Educating parents and caregivers on SEC, SRHR and protection mechanisms to be active partners
•	Development of localized user-friendly materials for parents, and caregivers, conduct of community education sessions on SEC. 
•	Provision of integrated parenting support interventions in local parenting effectiveness sessions
•	Working with local social welfare offices to integrate training on online risks in family development sessions for beneficiaries of the Philippines' Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.5 

2.More children exercise higher levels of agency and autonomy over their bodies and lives
•	Strengthening capacity of children and youth (CAY) groups to take proactive steps on online safety and SEC prevention. 
•	Co-creation strategies with CAY groups to develop innovative, creative, age-appropriate social and behavior change communication materials on SEC and encouraging victim resilience. 
•	Organize and train CAY groups to participate in regional hubs, to be organized by Plan under this project. 
•	CAY groups will be mobilized to provide peer support roll-outs on SEC, SRHR, gender norms and referral pathways/ CPS, using SBCC materials developed. Plan will also make use of existing information apps such as Oky  to promote SRHR-related information and provide support to young women experiencing reproductive health issues.  

3.Communities contribute to changed social norms and practices
•	Integrated SEC prevention and education in selected schools and communities. 
•	Develop age, gender and culturally sensitive gamified contents on online protection and SEC prevention.
•	Work with schools and surrounding communities to integrate SEC preventive measures in child protection protocols, build capacity of teachers and organize learning sessions with students.

4.Increased agency of families and communities in the protection of children from SEC and their response to reported cases
•	Training CSOs, families and communities (including schools) on SEC, SRHR and child protection adapted to their needs

5.Strengthened economic resilience
Economic poverty and experience of household and community-level shocks are considered to be major drivers for violence against children including engagement to commercial sexual exploitation of children. 
•	To avert this, youth and families of SEC will be provided with direct assistance support to be used for livelihood projects to facilitate their reintegration and/or prevent from them from going back to SEC practices. The process will entail mapping of the capacity of the family to start - up livelihood as well market scanning. Skills and entrepreneurship training will be provided among selected youths.

6.Greater and safer access to quality child protection and local SRHR information and services
•	Linking victims and survivors of SEC to free psychosocial and legal services. 
•	Process will be embedded within orientations conducted with stakeholders and communities, and through inclusion of accessible mechanisms such as helplines.

7.Increased access to life skills and education for children and youth
•	Collaborate with Lifeskills program providers that would enhance CAYs creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making in order to create a proactive youth, along with personal and social responsibility that contribute to good citizenship. These are basic skills that will enable the CAYs to handle issues and problems encountered in daily life, online and offline

8.Improved coordination of child-friendly service delivery (between sectors and across levels)
•	Organizing multi-stakeholder hubs for sharing of practices and service referrals and policy inputs on OSEC. 
•	Organizing regional hubs to pilot multi-stakeholder approaches and will be a platform for information and best practice-sharing and elevating solutions across government units, civil society organizations and CAY organizations, and will be provided with relevant technical support. 
•	Using documentation of practices from the hubs, the project will develop policy briefs and a comprehensive OSEC response plan to support decision-makers with the development of the national strategic plan on OSEC.

9. Increased recognition among duty bearers on their role in SEC prevention and response, including streamlined data collection and analysis
•	Developing the capacity of multi-disciplinary teams composed of social workers, police officers, and other frontliners in handling and managing cases of SEC. 
•	Training of Multi-Disciplinary Teams, and development of SEC toolkit to serve as reference of duty-bearers on the reporting and management of SEC. Child-friendly toolkit will be developed for CAY organizations.
10. Better recognition in private sector of required and potential roles in SEC prevention & response based on (inter)national commitments Capacity-building is a central strategy to all three outcomes. Children and young people, CSOs, child protection system- and private sector actors will be provided with access to knowledge, skills and means to address the (technical) concepts of online/ offline SEC and online violence – its dangers and the much needed prevention, monitoring and response action. The expected impact is that by fully understanding the risks, children and young people are enabled to better protect themselves and to report cases within their families and communities. Moreover, their empowerment to influence duty bearers and decision makers on child protection, will contribute to more agile child- and gender responsive child protection systems in which the needs of children and young people are well reflected. By strengthening the technical- and institutional understanding among  child protection system actors in online/ offline SEC prevention, response and monitoring, the project contributes to an improved protective environment for children and young people at risk/ and victims of OSEC and online violence in target areas. As the project makes use of technical platforms, where children and youth groups will safely learn, participate and assert, they are enabled to safely discuss fears, experiences, constraints and solutions related to online/ offline SEC and online violence. Collective technical platforms for both civil society, the private- and public sector will be established/ strengthened to enable CSOs and child- and youth (led) groups to effectively lobby for and discuss measures against OSEC and online violence.