Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) remains a hidden crisis, often going unreported due to stigma and illegality. In Brazil, a large-scale school-based intervention, Crescer Sem Violência (Growing Up Without Violence, or GWV), aims to confront this issue directly. Canal Futura and its partners developed the program to teach young people how to recognise inappropriate sexual behaviour, stay safe online and report abuse. To evaluate its impact, researchers from University College London and the Catholic University of Pernambuco conducted a rigorous cluster randomised controlled trial across 60 schools in Pernambuco. Both the research protocol and the results of the study have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
The final results, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, offer key lessons and insights into both the design of GWV and the broader utility of the Brazilian school environment for CSEC prevention.
The evaluators did not find a statistically significant difference in CSEC risk knowledge between schools that received the intervention versus schools that did not, though there was a borderline improvement in knowledge among just girls.
Lessons that emerged from the cluster randomised trial apply to implementing teachers and school officials, school-based decisionmakers and frontline organisations working to prevent CSEC, sexual abuse and other forms of violence.
Lessons for schools and teachers
- Equip teachers with practical tools: Teachers need support to overcome discomfort with sensitive subject matter, navigate potential opposition from parents or community norms and handle complex disclosures effectively.
- Increase emphasis on engaging high-risk and absentee students: High absenteeism means that the most vulnerable adolescents—who are often at greater risk of abuse and exploitation—are most likely to miss school-based prevention activities.
- Broaden school-wide delivery and train multiple staff members: Relying on only one or two trained teachers per school limits overall coverage across classrooms. Training multiple educators or using a “train-the-trainer” model ensures broader reach and safeguards against delivery gaps caused by teacher turnover or absenteeism.
- Build trust and positive student relationships: Students who feel unheard or perceive that educators take no interest in their out-of-school lives are less likely to trust teachers or engage meaningfully in CSEC prevention activities.
Lessons for CSEC prevention programming
- Combine knowledge-based curricula with structural pathways: Educational programs should address structural factors such as establishing accessible, clear, and trusted reporting pathways and support services.
- Embed process evaluations and fidelity tracking: Future iterations of GWV should systematically monitor implementation quality, dose and fidelity to understand how programs are delivered in real-world settings and identify barriers to uptake.
- Account for variations in baseline knowledge: Brazilian students may already possess substantial baseline awareness regarding certain risks such as online abuse, suggesting that future programs should home in on skill gaps to complement increased awareness.
