Help prevent sexual abuse of children in India

Child Sexual Abuse affects 1 in 2 children in India. Over time, our experiences and research have shown us, that adults taking steps to equip themselves with the right knowledge and tools, and imparting Personal Safety Education to children can play a great role in addressing this issue. We wanted to create a space for people to come together to create a dialogue on this issue, take action, and change the narrative around Child Safety by looking at it through a lens of hope and not fear.

It was with this vision and hope that Arpan launched Child Safety Week, from 14^th to 20^th November 2019. The Child Safety Week was an initiative towards building a people-led movement for collective action for change towards addressing concerns of child sexual abuse - by way of dedicating a concentrated period annually for conversations, actions and change efforts for Child Safety. For greater engagement with stakeholders, Child Safety Week was planned around key dates relevant to children and Child Rights that fall in this period, namely:

- 14th November: Children's Day, India
- 19th November: World Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse 
- 20th November: International Children's Day

Key support came from Vidya Balan, the goodwill ambassador of Arpan as she launched Child Safety Week and took the Child Safety Pledge, urging her followers to take action on this pertinent issue.

Click here to view Vidya Balan's video.

Child Safety Week 2019 emerged as a true community-led initiative with 102 organisations participating in it.

Community Building: Engaging different stakeholders for taking collective action for safety from Child Sexual Abuse.

Pledges and Appeals: The pledge and appeal for Child Safety was a key call to action for this campaign. 74 children appealed for Child Safety, 1,038 adults pledged directly, and 84,777 adults and children pledged for Child Safety through their organisation. Collectively, 85,894 pledges were taken and appeals were made in English, Hindi, Marathi, Sign Language and Spanish.

Watch the video of hearing-impaired children appeal during the Child Safety Week here.

Facebook Live Conversation: Child Safety Week 2019 focused on starting conversations and sharing resources and information through digital engagement. Through the week we focused on heightened engagement to drive the importance and urgency of the issue of Child Sexual Abuse further. We reached over 60,000 people with the help of our digital efforts.

We had enlightening conversations across social media channels on all days, especially on a Facebook Live conversation focused on Online Safety for children and adolescents which had a reach of over 64,397 people and engaged 8,000 unique users.

We had a 24-hour Tweetathon from 19th November 12 PM IST to 20th November 12 PM IST, with a Tweet chat on 19th evening. On Twitter, our hashtags #iStandForChildSafety had 208 users, 2000 Posts and an Engagement of 12,200 and the hashtag #ChildSafetyWeek had 191 Users, 2,100 Posts and an Engagement of 11,900.

Offline Engagement: There were community-led training, events, and other activities to start conversations in local communities about Child Sexual Abuse and Child Safety. It was heartening to see 102 Organisations including Government bodies, Corporates, Not for profits and Schools coming together from all over India to create awareness about the issue of Child Sexual Abuse. There continues to be engagement from different organisations on the issues of Child Safety and Personal Safety Education, even after the Child Safety Week.

The Child Safety Week ended on a celebratory note with Arpan being awarded for its Personal Safety Education Programme at the WISE Awards 2019. The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), recognizes and promotes six innovative projects that address global educational challenges, from across the world each year. The six winners were selected by the WISE Awards Jury after an independent assessment. The other 2019 WISE Awards winners included: Family Business for Education (Street Child) (UK/Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Liberia), United World Schools: Teaching the Unreached (UK/Cambodia, Nepal, and Myanmar), Micro:bit Educational Foundation (UK/Global), Programa Crianca Feliz (Brazil) and Akilah Institute (USA/Rwanda).

Watch Arpan receive the WISE Award 2019 here.

It was a proud moment that celebrated not just Arpan's work but also of all our partners who allowed us to work with them, our Board members and Advisors whose guidance has been critical and all our donors who've believed in this work and supported it continuously. But most importantly it celebrated all the thousands of children who trusted us, in their lives so that we could help them. Their resilience has been inspiring for all of us to see. They make us seem great and whilst we are warriors in the fight against Child Sexual Abuse, they are the real heroes who give us the hope and motivation to keep fighting this battle. May we continue to serve them with integrity and accountability.

Season's Greeting and wishing you the best for 2020!

The second quarter of the financial year 2019-20 was eventful for us at Arpan both at the programmatic font and at the level of organizational development. We are delighted to share that Arpan’s Personal Safety Education Programme has won the 2019 WISE awards! This is our 2nd international award.

This quarter, we have touched the lives of 18,912 children and adults through our 4 programmes – Personal Safety Education, Mental Health Services, Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training and Online Prevention and Awareness. With this, we had the privilege to work with 253,538 unique children and adults since our inception. Arpan has also participated in public engagement activities for creating wider visibility of the issue. Arpan has developed a host of resources to support its programme and strengthened monitoring and evaluation of its programmes. At the operation front, Arpan has initiated different employee engagement activities and has been certified as a Great Place to Work.

Personal Safety Education

Personal Safety Education Programme (PSE) is a life skill-based module which teaches children to identify safe and unsafe situations, skills to refuse and get away from incidents of Child Sexual Abuse and seek help. The programme also works with adult caregivers so that they can create a safe environment for children and respond effectively. This quarter, Arpan worked with children in new schools and in schools, where Arpan had conducted the Personal Safety Education Programme earlier. We have reached out to over 17,503 teachers, service staff, parents, children through new schools as well as schools where we have implemented before (Step Up schools). 513 children were referred for counselling after the comprehensive programme and 250 children after the abridged programme. We have provided counselling to children through 2397 individual sessions and 29 group sessions. We also provided psychoeducation to 154 caregivers of these children through 173 individual sessions and facilitated 5 joint sessions with the child and their trusted adult.

Mental Health Services

Arpan is one of the few organizations working at various levels to facilitate healing and accompany the victims of Child Sexual Abuse and the family in their journey towards mental wellbeing. Through our Mental Health services, we have worked with 6 children who have experienced sexual abuse and 1adult survivor. The focus of this programme is to provide

easy access to mental health services, destigmatize it and support the healing journey of survivors.

Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training

We at Arpan train adults to take steps to create “A World Free of Child Sexual Abuse.” We focus on building professional capacity for child protection by conducting training and capacity building initiatives with NGO professionals, Social Workers, Teachers, Institutional staff, Health professionals, Mental Health professionals, Government duty bearers, Corporates. We also advocate for robust child protection mechanisms at the systemic level by working on a collaborative model with government bodies. We have conducted training and capacity building sessions with 712 professionals including teachers, mental health professionals, social workers, caregivers, and support personnel through government bodies and non-government organizations – taking into account both training participants with whom we worked for the first time in this quarter and participants with whom sessions were repeated. Arpan has also conducted awareness sessions with 383 individuals from diverse platforms. Some critical partnerships included training of 200 mentor teachers for Directorate of Education Government of Delhi and training sessions with master trainers from Childline India Foundation who are now conducting training for teachers PAN-India under the Nishtha programme on Child Sexual Abuse.

Arpan’s advocacy at the national level has paved the way for Arpan to continue working closely with NCERT’s School Health programme under the ‘Ayushman Bharat’ initiative and contribute towards finalising content on Safety and Security for primary grades. Arpan has been invited to be part of the National Resource Group of NCERT to conduct training sessions for teachers. Arpan has been listed as an advisory committee member for NCPCR's Project Umbrella which is focused on addressing Child Sexual Abuse.

Online Prevention and Awareness

Realising the potential of an interactive e-Learning platform as an easy and efficient learning tool to transcend geographical boundaries and scale Personal Safety Education programme, we launched online learning programme where children can learn about Personal Safety and adults can acquire awareness about Child Sexual Abuse prevention and intervention last year. This quarter, 212 children between age 8-10 years and 16 adults accessed our online module. We have launched Hindi and Marathi versions of the flipbook ‘My Safety Book’ for children above 5+ years for teaching them concepts of Personal Safety as well as facilitators’ course for their caregivers. At this phase of learning and consolidating we have gathered feedback from users of our product and launched several iterative updates on videos, images and website interactivity.

Research, Monitoring and Evaluation

The focus of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation for this quarter has been to streamline the newly launched Management and Information System (MIS), automatize summary sheets for compilation of monitoring data and train programme staff on MIS. It also focussed on finalization of output assessments for programmes, for example, tools like pre-post-test. Another key area of focus has been the development and dissemination of results of a recently conducted evaluation of Arpan’s Training of Trainers’ programme (Phase 1) for training stakeholders on Personal Safety Education programme.

Resource Development

Resource development is an integral part of all programmes at Arpan. This quarter our focus has been to initiate revision of comprehensive modules of grades 3^rd - 4^th as part of Arpan’s ongoing learning cycle towards keeping the curriculum relevant amidst ever-changing ground realities. We also piloted the abridged module with grade 7^th -10^th with over 1400 children. We have developed an activity booklet which will facilitate implementation of the Personal Safety Education programme in classroom, based on our experience of working with children across varied socioeconomic contexts.

Public Engagement

With a vision of a world free from Child Sexual Abuse, Arpan proposes to create awareness and sensitization through public advocacy and communication campaigns. Arpan has increased online presence this quarter. Arpan’s CEO Pooja Taparia hosted a Facebook live session on Child Sexual Abuse which was received with much appreciation. Arpan has also been successful in building key strategic partnerships to increase the visibility of the issue. This quarter has also been invested in doing background work to build a collective movement against Child Sexual Abuse as Arpan is launching the ‘Child Safety Week’, from November 14 – 20, 2019.

We envision the ‘Child Safety Week’ to be an annual community-owned and executed idea, towards:

• Creating large scale visibility, awareness and urgency around the issue; and 
• Mobilising citizens and organisations to become active stakeholders to achieve this vision 

Awards and Accolades

We are delighted to share that Arpan’s Personal Safety Education Programme has won the 2019 WISE awards! This is our 2^nd international award. The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), recognizes and promotes six innovative projects that address global educational challenges, from across the world each year. This year, WISE received 481 project submissions and the WISE team and a panel of pre-jurors shortlisted the submissions to 15 finalists. The six winners from around the world were selected by the WISE Awards Jury after an independent assessment. Arpan’s Personal Safety Education Programme is among these six WISE Awards winners this year!

We are proud to announce that Arpan has been certified in the social sector as a Great Place to Work. This showcases that our team members appreciate and enjoy the 'space' that all of us have co-created. The Great Place to Work Model is built on 25 years of research and surveys of millions of employees. Great workplaces demonstrate better performance, present a stronger employer brand, and more effectively retain employees. Arpan undertook the survey conducted by Great Place to Work Institute and came out in flying colours on all the five dimensions – credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie.