Amid rising number of cases of child abuse and bad touch, IAS officer Naveen Jain has launched a special drive to sensitize school children about good touch and bad touch through his initiative, Sparsh. The officer started this initiative in August 2019 and it has already covered 26 districts till now.
Speaking exclusively to Indian Masterminds, Mr. Naveen Jain, Secretary, Panchayati Raj, Rajasthan, shared details about the programme.
SPARSH
The programme, Sparsh, started in August 2019 when some volunteers, including IAS officer Naveen Jain, were discussing about the rising number of news related to child abuse and bad touch, particularly with school children.
It was then that first started the sessions with the help of a lady working in Delhi and invited her to take sessions in Jaipur schools and spell out some steps needed to save kids from physical abuse. Later on, Mr. Jain decided to move forward and bring changes in the awareness content. In the first stage of the programme, the officer targeted students from class 1-8. He chose Saturday as the day for the sessions as he and his team, and most office working people have a Saturday off. “Saturday for society became our broader concept,” he said.
They take a 45 minute to 1 hour session in schools where they make the school children aware about bad touch through a PPT which includes AV presentation on the projectors. When a projector is unavailable, they use flexi sheets. The PPT slides include what is good and bad touch, how to save yourself, and other such tips.
There are not more than 250 children in each session. The officer said that their idea is to keep the sessions as simple as possible so that children from classes 1-8 can understand it. They have also created a short film of 5 minutes which they show to the children at the end of the session.
“After 5 months of this initiative, it became a chain reaction model. When we started this initiative in one district, some people requested us to do the sessions in their district as well. For us, it was possible to be in the district for one day only, so we told them to continue it with their volunteers, and in this way, it went further,” Mr. Jain shared.
Slowly, they started moving out of Jaipur and managed to cover 25 districts and have volunteers in all these districts. This went on from August to February 2020 and they had planned to re-start the session again in April 2020, but then Covid lockdown happened. “We started the programme online on Zoom and went live on Facebook page. It went like this for 2 years and only selected schools approached us. Through online sessions, not only kids, but their parents also, attended the sessions and we could cover some schools in Gujarat and Ladakh as well,” he said.
He also said that through this initiative, they could show to everyone that one does not need an office or papers to work for a cause. The officer and team operated through social media, WhatsApp groups and their Facebook page, Sparsh ek pehel.
“In the starting days, people doubted us – how we will teach their children. Some schools even worried, what if we will ask the students about facing such situation. But we clearly told the school principals to ask the students about it after the sessions and listen to them carefully instead of scolding them. Our work is to create awareness and not to catch the criminals,” Mr. Jain said.
The programme has covered 26 districts and has taken 2901 sessions in 6612 schools and 646211 children and teachers have been part of the sessions till now.
SPARSH FOR TEENAGERS
Once, a school showed Mr. Jain chats of a class 8 student to his girl classmate, about which he said, “Those were texts which we can’t even imagine at such an age. That’s when I decided to come up with a package, Sparsh for Teenagers, for students of class 9 to 12.” During this session, they stress mostly on online harassment, cyber bullying, stalking and trolling.
The volunteers also describe personal safety rules, advising children how to deal with strangers, bus conductors, and e-commerce courier delivery person. They also make students aware about digital bad touch, where one can show a bad clip and later blackmail them.
Mr. Jain further informed that in October, he is launching another package named Sparsh for Teachers for students studying B.Ed. The aim is to make them aware about Sparsh for Children, and Sparsh for Teenagers, so that whenever they join any school or open their own, they first teach children about good and bad touch and then continue with the syllabus.
WORLD BOOK OF RECORDS
Mr. Jain informed Indian Masterminds that Collector of Dausa reached out to him and asked him to conduct sessions in all the schools of his district as well. So, he asked the DM to call all the teachers on one day for four different sessions. There, they trained 2,000 teachers of 2,000 schools. “Later, the DM held session of 3 lakh 50 thousand students in 2600 school on a single say and recorded its name in the World Book of Records,” Mr. Jain said. He and his team have also trained 1400 teachers in the Pratapgarh district of Rajasthan.
