Help prevent sexual abuse of children in India

The third quarter of the financial year 2019-20 was exciting for Arpan. This quarter, we have touched the lives of 15,973 children and adults through our 4 programmes - Personal Safety Education, Mental Health Services, Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training and Online Prevention and Awareness. The highlight of the quarter was launching the 'Child Safety Week' from 14th November to 20th November as a community-led movement by Arpan for dialogue, action and change efforts for Child Safety. It was heartening to see that the campaign reached out to over 7,00,000 individuals and diverse organisations came together to create awareness about the issue. Here is the link to the impact report and a short video on Child Safety Week.

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 7432 children and 6123 teachers, service staff, parents, through new schools as well as schools where we have implemented before (Step Up schools). 325 children (amounting to 8% cases) were referred for counselling after children have undergone comprehensive Personal Safety module and 198 children (amounting to 8% cases) were referred after children have undergone abridged Personal Safety module. We have provided counselling to these children through 2301 individual sessions and 67 group sessions. We also provided psychoeducation to 244 caregivers of these children through 262 individual sessions and facilitated 15 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. 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

Arpan has been focusing 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 and 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 373 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 1592 individuals from diverse platforms. Arpan has also handhold 68 participants who have been trained earlier to support them in implementing Arpan's prevention and intervention programme in their own settings.

Arpan's advocacy at the national level has paved the way for Arpan to be part of the Indian Alliance for Child Rights and CRY's review committee on National Policy for Children 2013. As part of this alliance, Arpan has collectively submitted suggestions on the policy which will be placed before the Ministry of Women and Child Development. Arpan was invited by SCERT (State Council of Educational, Research and Training), Delhi to conduct sessions as a part of the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan and also the induction programme for counsellors of DOE (Directorate Of Education). At the Maharashtra State level, Arpan has been invited to be a part of the Resource Group of SCERT, Maharashtra to contribute to the content on Safety and Security for Grade 1 to 8.

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, 649 users have accessed the 8-10 years Personal Safety online module and the facilitators’ course. We are proud to share that Arpan's e-Learn module is approved by CBSE under the 'Life Skill Education' for DIKSHA and is hosted on their website which is the national platform for knowledge sharing for teachers.

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. As mentioned earlier Arpan has successfully launched the Child Safety Week campaign from November 14 – 20, 2019. We are proud to share that Child Safety Week reached over 7, 00,000 people, building awareness and action on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse. 123 organisations including government bodies, corporates, not for profits, and others, came together to create a safer world under the Child Safety Week movement. The pledge and appeal for child safety were a key call to action for this campaign. Collectively, 90666 pledges were taken and appeals were made. On Twitter #iStandForChildSafety and #ChildSafetyWeek was trending in the top 10 in Mumbai and top 30 in India. Child Safety will be a reality if all of us play our part in it. With your sustained support, we hope to make this an even larger global movement in 2020! Join us for Child Safety Week 2020, sign up here