Help prevent sexual abuse of children in India

The third quarter of the financial year 2020 - 21 was exciting for Arpan. Although the schools remained closed, we continued our efforts to teach Personal Safety Education online.  This quarter, we were able to touch the lives of 1,35,678 children and adults through our 3 programmes namely Personal Safety Education, Child Sexual Abuse Education and Training, and Digital Learning. The highlight of this quarter was the 'Child Safety Week' from 14th November to 20th November which is a community-led movement by Arpan for initiating conversations on Child Sexual Abuse and empowering people to work towards preventing it. It was heartening to see that the campaign had a reach of over 13 million.

Personal Safety Education

Personal Safety Education Programme (PSE) is a life skill-based module that 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 too, Arpan conducted the Personal Safety Education Programme online and reached out to over 2,486 children and 1,095 adults. We handled 523 disclosures and we were able to bring closure to the healing work with 222 children in this quarter.

We also continued to provide COVID-19 related Mental Health services, apart from offering counselling support to those individuals who have experienced sexual abuse. Through our COVID specific Helpline and Portals, we provided support to 18 individuals and we saw a fabulous response for our email-based programme on personal well-being and growth with over 150 enrollments.

Training and Advocacy

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. In this quarter, 1,20,000 teachers of Maharashtra State Council of Educational Research and Training (MSCERT) had attended live virtual training of Arpan on Personal Safety. This training content was available on YouTube until Dec 2020 and had a viewership of over 9,25,000 for the session.

Our advocacy efforts at the national level have enabled us to initiate discussions with the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to place Arpan's resources on their web portals. At the state level, we have initiated conversations with the Crime against Women and Child Department of (Mumbai Police) for training police officials. This quarter, we also conducted training on mental health at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and online through focused learning groups, reaching out to over 100 individuals.

Public Engagement

With a vision of a world free from Child Sexual Abuse, Arpan creates awareness and sensitization through public advocacy and communication campaigns. The highlight of this quarter was the Child Safety Week which happened between 14th to 20th November. Despite the lockdown, it was astounding to see over 184 organisations and individuals from 9 countries come together to partner with and support Child Safety Week 2020. Influencers like Vidya Balan, Rahul Bose, Lillete Dubey, Neerja Birla helped spread awareness on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse through personalised messages. We are happy to share that the total reach of Child Safety Week 2020 was an amazing 13 million.

In this quarter Arpan's content was also carried in the RobinAge newspaper, a fortnightly newspaper for children aged between 4 and 15 years where our series on Child Safety has been published. The total reach through our public relation activities for Q3 was about 2,62,350 and that for Arpan through all its activities including Child Safety Week was about 15 million.

Digital Learning

Interactive e-Learning solutions have time and again proved to be an easy and efficient learning tool to transcend geographical boundaries and scale Personal Safety Education programme. Arpan's E-learn platform is a great place for children to learn about Personal Safety and adults can acquire awareness about Child Sexual Abuse prevention and intervention. The pandemic has accelerated the use of digital media and it continues to grow exponentially. This quarter, we reached out to over 8,600 individuals with our digital resources, either self-availed on Arpan's E-learn platform or through partner platforms like DIKSHA and partnerships like Inner Wheel.

With your sustained support, we hope to continue working towards creating a world free from Child Sexual Abuse.