Vision, Mission & Values

Arpan’s strategies and programmes are strongly guided by the following
Vision, Mission & Values

Our Vision

To have ‘A world free of Child Sexual Abuse’.

Our Mission

To prevent Child Sexual Abuse and heal those affected by it.

Arpan's Values, Culture And Principles

The values, culture and principles have guided Arpan as an organization. It has helped us remain true to our purpose, make decisions in the most challenging situations and navigate through the phenomenon of violence and abuse. These values, culture and principles are intrinsic to Arpan and need to be upheld at all times.

Values

Values are qualities that are core to Arpan.

Accountability

We strive to deliver what we have promised and are transparent about our failures. We work with integrity and take responsibility for our own actions and outcomes. We are responsible to ourselves, the organisation and all internal and external stakeholders.

Excellence

We strive to become better than we are today by challenging assumptions, demonstrating agility and being thoughtful. We are forever learners and relentless in the pursuit of maintaining quality and evolving creative, innovative and effective solutions.

Respect

We respect ourselves and others. We express our opinions, suggestions and feelings with dignity and listen to others openly even when their beliefs are different from our own.

Culture

Culture is a set of behaviours and practices that people at Arpan demonstrate.

Communication openness is the ease of talking to each other and gaining understanding through it. It has been treated synonymous to listening, honesty, frankness, trust and supportiveness. At Arpan, we believe in open and honest communication and we execute it through:
• Frequent transparent communication with external stakeholders on failures and success
• Transparent communication in the hiring process
• Timely communication of key decisions, strategic plans by the senior leadership
• Communication on Arpan’s performance and plans across all its programs and functions on a quarterly basis to every employee through quarterly reviews and annual review.
• Skip levels by CEO
• Encouraging ideas through building Strategic Plans and new initiatives
• Employees can reach out across levels to share concerns, suggestions and or address grievances
• Encouraging feedback through Suggestion Boxes, Great Place to Work surveys, HR audits
Organizational culture is not just "the way we do things around here" but is also the way we feel about each other within the organization. Arpan is a people first organization that recognizes employees, peers and external stakeholders as unique individuals with their own realities, skills and needs. Arpan cares for them and supports them as they are the most valuable resource for Arpan. It is the people who by their passion and grit are able to do the impossible. We also feel responsible to enhance people’s emotional and mental well-being as the work we do can impact them. We demonstrate a culture of care and support by:
• Trying to understand the needs of new employees and ensure they have all the resources they need on day one.
• Everyone in the team is supportive of new employees and helps them understand and align to the organisation programmatically and culturally
• Providing therapeutic support in the form of monthly allowance for therapy
• Providing the expense of coming to office as a part of travel allowance over and above salary
• Support during crisis like financial advances to employees
• Support for Covid care like Flexi working hours, bereavement leave, leave for recovering from Covid, provision of oxygen concentrators
• Emotional wellbeing activities for the team
• Care and support towards our stakeholders during crisis – providing ration aid to them/grief counselling during the pandemic
At Arpan, we believe that that the organization can move forward most effectively when we operate from a space of collaboration and cooperation which are at the heart of thinking, planning and decision making. We demonstrate a culture of team work by:
• Collaboration between different teams
• Collective planning at various levels
• Executing programmes, activities and events together
Celebrations are usually fun, but that’s not the only reason why we celebrate. Creating a culture of celebrations brings out the best in people and enhances the realization of being included and working as a collective. We demonstrate celebration and fun through:
• Birthday celebrations
• Team lunch and shared enjoyment for food – We are inspired from the saying - A family that eats together stays together. We at Arpan believes, a team that eats together stays together as they develop bonding through these informal spaces.
• Annual Picnic
• Celebrating milestones
• Celebrating Teachers’ Day, Women’s Day, Men’s Day and other Days to recognise and acknowledge each other
We believe that employees are intrinsically motivated when they are passionate about what they do and identify with the purpose of the work they are engaged in. At the same time recognition and appreciation from the supervisors/ managers for their performance are important ways in which we recognize superior performance and appreciate the qualities of our employees.
• Recognition or acknowledgment and extending praise to the individual or team in collective forums
• 1-1 recognition from a supervisor, peer, or external stakeholders and demonstration of gratitude and appreciation for an employee's accomplishments
• Appraisals, Promotion or increase in scope and responsibility
• Celebration of Appreciation Day to acknowledge and appreciate each other
• Celebrating individual employees’ success through awards
We cannot learn and grow alone. At Arpan, we strive to create a culture of shared learning, where everyone is learning together every single day. We also believe in sharing our learnings with external stakeholders so that more and more organisations invest in addressing the issue of CSA and strengthen interventions quickly having learnt from those who have done similar work. We demonstrate this by:
• In-depth induction programme to ensure all new employees understand the organization, our programs, functioning, people practices and the way we work
• Hosting collective sharing platforms like team sharing
• Quarterly Reviews and annual reviews with internal and external stakeholders
• Sharing our learning in external conferences, webinars seminars and with other organizations in the space
• Sharing our experiences, materials, internal processes and systems, policies with stakeholders who want to work on CSA/ child protection.
• Engaging external stakeholders and learning from their experience to inform our programmes
• Setting up an advisory council to seek advice and learn
Perseverance is about having the grit to work towards one’s goals. We believe everyone who takes an idea and makes it into something meaningful does it through hard work, tirelessness and diligence. At Arpan, we stay undeterred as we navigate through the phenomenon of violence and abuse undamped by discouragement, opposition or failure. This gets manifested by:
• Being focussed on predetermined strategic course and relentlessly pursue it while having the ability to adapt in the VUCA world we live in
• Taking an extra step to ensure that we reach out to our external stakeholders – ensuring we reach all children through repeated follow ups, having repeated conversations with adult stakeholders to uphold child safety
• Working on excellence and continuously improving it
We truly believe that our employees are our most valuable resource. Recognizing and appreciating good work and capability building and providing internal growth are keyways in which we nurture talent. Nurturing talent is knowing the strengths of our team members and enabling them to build on them and perform at higher levels by offering appropriate training and opportunities to grow. We demonstrate this by:
• Providing timely feedback to enable employees to improve/ perform at higher levels and scale up
• Organizing training and capacity building workshops and activities; soft skills workshops, case studies
• Providing annual training allowances to each employee
• Executive Coaching: one-on-one coaching for the senior leadership and group coaching for the managerial level
• Employees are encouraged and supported to move internally across teams and within teams
• Growing people from within the organization - some employees who started at the junior levels are currently in Managerial roles

Principles

Principles are rules or guidelines that govern the way Arpan works.

We keep the child in the center of all our decisions and actions upholding trust, safety and confidentiality.
We value being honest and true to ourselves and being authentic and consistent in our behavior, actions and words.
We project hope and not misery, demonstrate enthusiasm and solutions to addressing CSA as Prevention is Possible. Healing is Possible.
We are focussed on developing and following process and policies to make us efficient and maintain value.
We believe strategies and plans need to be driven by evidence and social impact must be monitored and evaluated continually to solve the issue of CSA.
We are purpose driven, aligned, proactive in driving solutions, taking opportunities to work towards our vision of A World Free of CSA.
We believe in working together, through partnerships to be able to draw on each other’s strengths and quicken the process of reaching our common goals.
We believe in being agile and innovative so that we can consistently adapt, thrive and be resilient in this VUCA* world.

*VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous
Arpan Values Culture & Principles