Arpan

With a vision to ensure A World Free of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), Arpan enables individuals, families, communities and society with prevention and intervention skills to reduce the occurrence of child sexual abuse and heal its psychological, social, sexual and physical consequences.

Programs:

Personal Safety Education Program (PSE) is Arpan’s flagship program. It is a comprehensive life-skill education programme that approaches CSA with the perspective of prevention and healing providing direct services to children, adolescents and adults. It is conducted in schools and community set-ups with children from Grades 1 to 10 to provide them with the knowledge and skills required to prevent CSA and seek support if such an incident occurs. Counselling services along with Psycho-education and psychotherapeutic support are also provided to family members of these children. During the last year, after conducting the PSE programme, nearly 1,002 (7%) children sought help out of which 4% of children indicated the need to undergo therapeutic intervention for both coping with grief and experiencing CSA and inappropriate behaviour.

Training & Advocacy Programme focuses on building professional capacity for child protection by conducting training and capacity building initiatives with various stakeholders to incorporate Child Protection mechanisms in their environments. Through the training sessions and awareness talks, Arpan reached out to government duty bearers, schools, NGO’s staff and international participants from various institutions. It has reached out to 18,000 professionals and individuals by participating in various events across diverse platforms in the last year, transitioned smoothly between online and offline modes as and when required.

Mental Health Services: So far, it has supported the healing journey of 13,988 children, adolescents, adult survivors and 2,892 family members and caregivers by providing psychoeducation/counselling and psycho-social intervention. Arpan aims at supporting the healing journey of rescued minors, adult survivors and young sexual offenders and helping them attend psycho-social stability. It also provides long-term psychotherapeutic support to adolescent girls and boys and adult survivors in shelter homes who have been sexually abused or trafficked. During Covid Era, Arpan expanded and diversified its mental health services to support the healing journey of those facing anxiety, stress, helplessness or grief or those who were triggered due to the uncertainty of the pandemic and loss of loved ones.

Public Awareness and Prevention was started to address individuals digitally beyond geographies including participation in civil society events (NGO events, corporate events and college events), marking its presence on social media and participating in various exhibitions and conferences. Celebrities like Ms. Vidya Balan (Arpan’s Goodwill ambassador), Mr. Hiten Tejwani, Ms. Tara Sharma Saluja, Mr. Onir and Mr. JD Matheja lent their voice to the campaign during the last year.