Help prevent sexual abuse of children in India

Introduction

Both programmatically and in terms of organisational development, the second quarter of FY 2021-22 has been eventful for us at Arpan, where we have impacted the lives of 19,395 children and adults through our programmes and public awareness initiatives. The international recognition that Arpan has received for its relentless work during the pandemic, along with mentions in the media, have only added to the enthusiasm and motivation of the team.

Recognition for COVID-19 Relief Work

Arpan has been chosen as 'India's top 50 Covid Leaders' by the World Economic Forum and Covid Response Alliance For Social Entrepreneurs for its commitment to be in the frontline of India's fight against Covid-19. Since the start of this humanitarian crisis, Arpan has been contributing towards essential grocery kits for individuals and families affected during these unprecedented times. Oxygen concentrators have also been provided to Government and Private hospitals through Project Mumbai, as our support towards the city's fight to overcome the Covid crisis. Through these initiatives, Arpan has distributed over 12,649 units of relief material (about 190 metric tons of ration) to date that has reached over 61,000 beneficiaries. Moreover, to address people's mental well-being, we have been extending our counselling services entirely free of cost and beyond issues related to Child Sexual Abuse which has provided mental health support to over 4,900 people.

Personal Safety Education Programme

Personal Safety Education Programme (PSE) is a life skill-based module that teaches children to identify safe and unsafe situations, empowers them to refuse assertively and get away from incidents of Child Sexual Abuse as well as seek help. The programme also works with adult caregivers so that they can create a safe environment for children and respond effectively. We were able to reach out to over 8,525 children and adults this quarter. We also provided psychotherapy to 129 children who disclosed after the Personal Safety Education programme.

Training and Advocacy Programme

Arpan focuses 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. In this quarter, through our training and capacity building initiative, we were able to train over 1,958 individuals. We also conducted a handholding session for the members of the Young Indians Raipur Chapter, Maratha Mandir's Babasaheb Gawde English Medium School, Oasis India, Tattva Counselling Center, Children of the World India Trust Bombay where we supported them to conduct Personal Safety Education sessions by helping them prepare for it and observing their session after we have already trained them. We facilitated mixed group training, where individuals from diverse organizations attend the training, consecutively for 3 months. We also implemented refresher training that is designed for participants who have attended Arpan's training in the past. We operate on a collaborative strategy with government bodies to advocate for robust child protection procedures at the systemic level. In the second quarter of 2021-22, we have trained and provided handholding to teachers through our State level advocacy. This included Akola Zilla Parishad Education Department, DIET (Rajinder Nagar), the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC). Through Arpan's national level advocacy efforts, Arpan has been a part of the School Health Program (SHP) under Ayushman Bharat. Arpan has worked with NCERT to develop and finalize the curriculum for Health & Wellness theme under SHP. At present, Arpan is a member of National Resource Group to train the Master Trainers and is regularly training them (in coordination with the Ministry) of different states. Also, for Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karykram (RKSK) Arpan worked with MoHFW, provided support to develop training content on Gender Based Violence & Injuries and is conducting training sessions regularly with Medical Officers & other Adolescent Health Counsellors.

Digital Learning Programme

E-learning systems have been proven to be a simple and effective learning tool for scaling educational programmes across geographical borders. Arpan E-learn is our free-to-avail online platform with engaging & age-appropriate modules on Personal Safety for children. It also has content for parents, teachers & adult caregivers that they can learn more about Child Sexual Abuse, recognizing symptoms and handling disclosures. Moreover, our Personal Safety Education modules have also been integrated on DIKSHA - which is a national platform for school education, an initiative of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT), Ministry of Education, GoI. Through Arpan E-learn and DIKSHA, over 3,600 people have availed the courses in this quarter.

Mental Health Services

It takes a lot of courage for the survivors of sexual abuse to take the first step towards healing. Arpan has been at the forefront of providing mental health support to the victims of Child Sexual Abuse to empower them to heal from its impact. Since last year, in light of the pandemic, Arpan has also extended its support to help people deal with the emotional and psychological challenges that they have faced in these difficult times. We have seen in our experience that the pandemic has brought about various mental health issues related to anxiety, fear, relationship issues, work related stress, educational concerns and related stress as well as adjustment issues. We have therefore continued to extend our helpline services to children and adults facing emotional challenges in light of the pandemic. We have also partnered with Maharashtra's Women & Child Development (WCD) department to provide grief-counselling to those children who have lost a parent due to COVID-19. This service covers children in the districts of Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburbs and Thane. Overall in this quarter, we have worked with 181 individuals and have provided 1,183 counselling sessions. In addition to this, we have also offered 21 self-care sessions to over 300 individuals including teachers, parents and NGO partners. 'Dive into Depth' training sessions were conducted for mental health professionals on the topic of grief counselling that was attended by 22 participants.

Public Engagement & Awareness

Building public awareness on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse to sensitize people on the impact and the prevention of it is a crucial part of Arpan's work. To achieve this, we use multiple communications channels like social media, news publications, radio and digital platforms. In this quarter, our cumulative public engagement reach was over 2.9 million, of which over 1.5 million was achieved through media articles that appeared in leading dailies like The Times of India, The Hindu, Loksatta to name a few. Since June 2021, Arpan's modules on Personal Safety in English and Hindi languages have been regularly telecasted on Swayamprabha PM eVidya's DTH channels for grades 1 to 10. In this quarter, over 2,83,650 children have viewed this content.

Annual Report - FY 2020 - 21

With the onset of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, FY 2020 - 21 has been a challenging and uncertain year for all. For Arpan, it was a test for our organisational resilience! The learnings from the past helped us take the change in our stride and turn the crisis into an opportunity for learning and growth. We present to you the Annual Report for FY 2020-21 - through this report we hope to give you a glimpse of those moments which we sought, recognised, embraced and those that shaped our practice and enlightened us. We are also very proud that despite the challenges that persisted throughout the year, we didn't lose sight of our vision and could touch the lives of 1,83,276 adults and children.

Read the report HERE

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

Please write to us at communications@arpan.org.in with your suggestions and feedback to make this newsletter better.