NGO reaches 18.3 million people with message on child sexual abuse
Arpan, an NGO that works to provide child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention and intervention services for both children and adults, conducted their annual review event on Monday at a south Mumbai venue. The almost two-decades-old organisation founded by Pooja Taparia has managed to reach nearly 18.3 million individuals through their work aided by a team of over 140 dedicated professionals.
Their targeted direct outreach at the start of last year was 93,503; and they managed to overshoot the target by achieving a direct outreach of 1,55,563.
The year 2023 was a year of consolidation – a year to reinforce their current programmes and initiatives, and also prepare for the next decade. To date, around 9,50,000 individuals have been trained directly by the NGO.
Taparia, said, “Moving forward, we are ready to scale up – teacher training, team size, budgets and more are going to grow by around 30%. It is also extremely exciting how much the ‘School, Health and Wellness Programme’ is reaching millions more children than we can imagine. That 18.3 million figure is really a small part of the total outreach and impact that we are seeing today.”
The speakers at the annual event included Dr Caroline Vaz from Green Lawns High School; Mahendra Gaikwad from district women and child development, Thane; Dr Trinjhna Khattar, programme director and psychotherapist, Institute for Exceptional Children; Jaikumar Leslie from TCSIOn; Leena Rajan from Bajaj Finserv; Dr Shobha Khandare from MSCERT; Anagha Padhye, head of philanthropy, Aga & Pudumjee Family; and Lisa Jordan, senior managing director at Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation.
The review was followed by an awards distribution ceremony that saw awards being given to the best performing employees of Arpan, in order to encourage people to continue working in this noble cause.