Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” We at Arpan believe this to be at the core of our mission. We train adults to take steps to create “A world Free of Child Sexual Abuse.” On the way, we also learn and educate ourselves.
Training and Capacity Building of Stakeholders:
As we look to scale our reach, Arpan has been reimagining and reinventing the ways to reach out to children and adults in creating transformational change. We cannot reach India’s 0.5 billion children ourselves and do not strive to do so either. Strategic partnerships are and will continue to be critical to replicating and scaling our work. The core idea is to work with partners who can get trained by Arpan on the PSE model and in turn implement the programme in their respective settings, so that millions of children are reached with messages of personal safety and that adults in their ecosystem are equipped to keep them safe. Arpan also handholds partners to enable them to implement the programme in their respective settings and is currently in the process of exploring online training, online refreshers, and online handholding.
We focus on building professional capacity for child protection by conducting training and capacity building initiatives with :
- NGO professionals
- Social Workers
- Teachers
- Institutional staff
We have trained over 2,94,000 professionals (govt. and non-govt. teachers, social workers and mental health professionals) to replicate prevention and intervention models of Child Sexual Abuse. Our partners have trained over 17.6 million (1 crore and 76 lakhs) adults and children through PSE implementation and Curriculum Integration. Arpan’s training and capacity building initiatives focus on:
- Training and Capacity building of Teachers including teachers from schools, NGOs and government bodies or duty bearers which aims to impart knowledge and skills for facilitating Personal Safety Education and familiarise teachers with the dynamics of Child Sexual Abuse
- Training and capacity building of Mental health professionals which aims to equip them to effectively respond to survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and trauma
- Training and Capacity of social workers/caregivers/support personnel both from NGOs and government bodies which are focused on integrating prevention and intervention modalities to respond to Child Sexual Abuse in diverse settings (institutions, organizations) and mainstream child protection.
Policy Advocacy
While we continue our direct outreach programmes and training, we have been making inroads into the government and leverage their reach to draw attention to a critical issue like CSA. Systemic level policy advocacy has been a focus area for a few years now. One of the key achievements has been the integration of Arpan’s Personal Safety Education into the Life Skills Education Curriculum at the National level for Grades 6 to 12. This is part of the National School Health and Wellness Programme under Ayushman Bharat, a joint initiative between the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Education, Government of India. The programme was launched in February 2020 and we trained 385 professionals from the State Resource Group of 14 states directly. The programme is getting rolled out across 200 districts in India. Arpan’s PSE content was also integrated in Maharashtra State Council of Educational Research and Training’s (MSCERT) child safety and security module. Similarly, Arpan’s digital content was integrated into the DIKSHA platform of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which houses training material for teachers pan-India. Arpan has also built partnerships with key government entities, including the Bihar Education Project Council (BEPC), Women and Child Development Department (WCD) Konkan zone, WCD Haryana and the Directorate of Education, Government of Delhi and is leveraging these partnerships to enable further uptake of or programmes. Currently, we are working in three of the five States where CSA is most prevalent as per the WCD Study (2007)
To conduct an awareness session or training with professionals, teachers, government officials, and social workers, police write to us at communications@arpan.org.in or call us on +91 98190 51444