By Sharalene Moonjely | Director- Public Engagement
We at Arpan had another exciting quarter. The third quarter of the financial year 2018-19 provided us with ample opportunities to touch lives, create awareness and lend a voice to the issue of CSA. This quarter, we have touched the lives of 17,984 children and adults through our 3 programmes – Personal Safety Education, Mental Health Services and Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training and made significant progress in developing our new programme - ‘Online Prevention’. Arpan has also participated in public engagement activities through events for creating wider visibility of the issue. Arpan has developed a host of resources to support its programmes and also launched a mobile-based application for ensuring effective M &E practices along with conducting evaluation studies on existing programmes.
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 16,800 children and adults through 41 schools and 3 community setups. Over 300 children post the programme were referred for counselling. 491 children were provided counselling in this quarter through 1385 children which included both cases referred in this quarter and cases which were carried forward from last quarter. We also provided psychoeducation to 119 caregivers of these children through 128 individual sessions and facilitated 2 joint sessions with the child and their trusted adult.
Mental Health Services
Through our Mental Health services, we have worked with institution-based 29 adolescents and adult survivors through 45 individual sessions and 13 group sessions. We have also worked with 31 children and 8 adult survivors who reached out to Arpan for healing support. This included clients who were referred in this quarter and cases which were carried forward from the last quarter. For the institution based clients, this quarter focussed on crisis intervention work, using art-based therapy and mindfulness to work on clients’ feeling of anger, hurt, dealing with change and strengthening their support system including peer support.
Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training
We have conducted training and capacity building sessions with 599 professionals including teachers, mental health professionals, social workers, caregivers and support personnel through government bodies and non-government organizations. This included both training participants with whom we worked for the first time in this quarter and participants with whom sessions were repeated. The training and capacity building focused on ‘Understanding Child Sexual Abuse’, ‘Personal Safety Education’ and ‘Barefoot Counselling’. In this quarter, we have conducted training sessions with Sarvodaya High School, Kalyan, MCGM, Special Need, School Education Department, Zilla Parishad, Kohlapur, Chandrapur District Administration, Anjuman Islam, Allana English School Holy Mother English Medium School and Cosmos English Medium School.
In order to advocate for the prevention of CSA and effective intervention, Arpan participated in many conferences and seminars. Some of these were - UNICEF state level consultations at Guwahati, Lucknow and Chennai, 4th Annual Round Table on Juvenile Justice in New Delhi, 10th School Choice National Conference in New Delhi, Principals Conclave organized by the Times of India in Mumbai, Technical Group Meeting to develop a public engagement initiative on child protection and AVPN India Summit.
Online Prevention Programme
Arpan has launched Online Prevention programme geared towards creating a comprehensive online child protection curriculum in order to expand its reach beyond geographies. As we integrate technology into the core of our programmes, we started with small steps of creating eBooks for adults on the prevention and intervention of CSA and an interactive flipbook for children aged five and above. This quarter Arpan has launched Personal Safety Course for 8-10-year-old which consists of 12 videos and 15 quizzes and will provide children with a platform to become well versed in keeping themselves safe. This course is created in a way so that it is responsive to diverse technology platforms and is available at www.arpanelearn.com.
Public Engagement
Arpan has participated and hosted events to create wide visibility of the phenomenon of CSA. Windmill Festival is one of the few international festivals conducted in India that is solely dedicated to children. One of the highlights of the festival this year included a component of Child Sexual Abuse awareness, organized by us. This event provided us with space to actively involve children and parents through an interactive quiz session on child safety in a fun game of darts and reach out to 650 parents and caregivers. 30 Days in September, a renowned play on Child Sexual Abuse was hosted by Arpan on 30th November 2018. This play is a powerful and gripping tale of a complex mother-daughter relationship scripted by Mahesh Dattani and directed by Lillete Dubey. The play which has become, 'a great reference point for an understanding of Child Sexual Abuse depicted with amazing sensitivity and emotional intensity' was attended by over 400 individuals. Principals from city schools discussed the need to upgrade curriculum, invest in teachers and create safe spaces for school children at The Times of India and Maharashtra Times Principals Conclave, Mumbai edition, held in December 2018. Ms. Pooja Taparia, CEO Arpan was a panelist. She said, “Principals and school authority should not shy away from addressing the issues of Child Abuse and should do what is necessary as heads of schools in keeping children safe. It is the need of the hour and it's better to take preventive measures rather than not know what to do once a case comes to light.” To read more http://toi.in/M3pzhY/a24gk
We launched the new look of our website. The website will become the ultimate guide on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse!Please pay us a visit to www.arpan.org.in
Arpan has also gained significant media coverage through 6 print media articles and 3 online article and 1 television coverages.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
