“It’s going to hit the most vulnerable hardest, like everything does.”

In this episode Katherine speaks with Daniela Ligiero, executive director and CEO of Together for Girls, a partnership focused on collecting data to raise awareness about the problem of violence towards children and adolescents, with a special focus on preventing sexual violence against girls. During the Covid-19 pandemic young children, particularly girls, have become especially vulnerable to violence, including sexual violence, spending long, unsupervised hours online or alone at home while adults in the household are away working. With health resources in many places diverted to outbreak response, Together for Girls has worked to sustain and improve services to prevent the abuse of children, support survivors of violence, and advocate for young people’s needs during the crisis. Daniela describes recent efforts such as the Brave Movement and Keep Kids Safe, which create networks of sexual violence survivors in the United States and around the world who share their experiences publicly to galvanize political will to develop policies to address these challenges during the pandemic and beyond it.