Help prevent sexual abuse of children in India

Introduction

For us at Arpan, the third quarter of FY 2021-22 is one of the most exciting time of the year because all the teams come together to work towards Child Safety Week (14th - 20th November). You may be aware that Child Safety Week is a people-led movement initiated by Arpan in 2019 with the goal of bringing organisations and individuals together to mainstream dialogues around Child Sexual Abuse and raise awareness. We are proud to say, this year's event was also a big success and we have a glimpse of it later in the newsletter.

While schools were closed due to the epidemic, we continued to use digital means to teach children and adults about Personal Safety. This quarter, over 18,500 children and adults were impacted by our key programmes (notably the Personal Safety Education, Training & Advocacy, and Digital Learning), as well as through other activities. 

Personal Safety Education Programme

Personal Safety Education Programme (PSE) is a life skill-based module that teaches children to identify unsafe situations, skills to refuse and get away from incidents of Child Sexual Abuse and seek help. Adult caregivers are also included in the training so that they can provide a safe environment for children and respond appropriately. In this quarter, we were able to reach over 4,200 children and over 1,700 adults. What's new is that we've expanded our Personal Safety Education programme to work with adolescents in the age group of 16-18 years. This quarter we have engaged with them and initiated conversation on personal safety. We also provided counselling to 197 children who disclosed after the Personal Safety Education.

Training and Advocacy Programme

Arpan conducts training and capacity building programmes with NGO professionals, social workers, teachers, institutional personnel, health professionals, mental health experts, Government duty bearers, and corporates with the goal of increasing professional capacity for child safety. We were able to train approximately 8,000 people this quarter as part of our training and capacity-building strategy.

Through our advocacy at the central level, this quarter too we continued to offer content-based and training-based support to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) for Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) and have also supported the School Health & Wellness (SHW) programme under Ayushman Bharat (A collaborative between the Ministry of Education (MoE) and MoHFW). State-level advocacy resulted in Arpan being onboarded for creation of the State Curriculum Framework under the National Education Policy (NEP) in Maharashtra and Chattisgarh as an NGO partner. We also trained teachers following a directive by the Delhi Education Department and will be training teachers in Indore as per a directive by the Madhya Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights. We also conducted various trainings in the districts of Buldhana and Thane in Maharashtra.

Digital Learning Programme

With an aim to educate many more children on personal safety, Arpan has adapted  Personal Safety Education course content traditionally delivered in the classrooms into online courses that can be accessed on www.arpanelearn.com. These courses are free-to-avail and can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The elearn modules have also been integrated on DIKSHA (Government of India's national platform for school education) as well as on other platforms like TCS iON is used by other organisations such as Inner Wheel. Over 4,200 people completed the modules as a result of these partnerships, while over 230 people completed the courses on Arpan elearn.

Mental Health Services

We truly believe that healing is possible, hence Arpan has been at the forefront of offering mental health care to victims of Child Sexual Abuse in order to empower them overcome its impact. Arpan has also expanded its support to help people deal with the emotional and psychological challenges they have faced in these trying times since last year, 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 their parents due to COVID-19.

In total, we worked with 354 individuals (children and adults) and delivered 2137 counselling sessions in this quarter.

Public Engagement & Awareness

Arpan's work includes raising public awareness on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse in order to educate people about how it could be prevented. We use a variety of communication channels to accomplish this, including social media, news magazines, radio, and digital platforms. Our total public engagement reach in this quarter was over 13.4 million, including the reach we gained during Child Safety Week. Apart from this, the video formats of the elearn modules were telecasted in English and Hindi on SwayamPrabha PM E-Vidya channels for grades 1 to 10 throughout the third quarter giving us thousands of more eyeballs.

Child Safety Week

The third edition of Child Safety Week (November 14th to November 20th, 2021) was an action-packed week, with over 167 organisations, 11 Influencers & 4 Adult Survivors from India and around the world coming together to raise their voices and mainstream dialogues about Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). This is especially commendable given that the world was not only still dealing with the pandemic but was also digitally exhausted. 

The impact? We reached over 12.5 million people - these include people who heard our core messages, were sensitised on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse in some way, who held activities, shared content and accessed resources. The highlight was that the Child Safety Week was observed by atleast 13 Indian states following a directive from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), Govt. Of India. A detailed report can be found 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.