Simran Rawat

A Cry for Help Foundation- Simran Rawat

Our Beginning

ACFH started in 2013 in DPS Gurgaon. Then we successfully conducted workshops in several schools like Ryan International, Sohna Road; Scottish High and SN Sidheshwar school as well as organised awareness initiatives in public places like Galleria and events like Raahgiri Day. As part of our awareness initiatives, we performed various flash mobs and a few street plays. Our first major collaboration was with Teach For India to mentor children from Delhi’s most underprivileged government schools.

Organisation Profile

We work with children from the ages of 10-21 to help them tackle issues like self harm, suicide, bullying, substance abuse and more. ACFH adopts a 3 step model of conducting workshops, training student leaders and providing peer counselling to help students. We also tackle taboo topics like sexual health, mental wellness and more through informal and interactive means. Our model is currently being implemented in schools across Delhi NCR. The USP of the model is that it is by young people for young people, empowering the youth community to give and seek help from each other. We’ve impacted over 5000 children in schools like Pathways, Tagore International and DPS, as well as government schools. We’ve also reached out to hundreds of teachers and

About The Team

Simran Rawat is the co-founder and Trustee of A Cry for Help Foundation, a charitable trust working in the area of adolescent mental and sexual health. She is the Regional Leader- India for clubs under the UN Foundation’s Girl Up campaign. She has conducted over 30 workshops and directly reached out to over 1500 students. Simran is especially passionate about topics such as feminism, sexuality and consent and also gave a TEDx Talk on the same at only 18 years of age. Her sexual health workshops are highly sought after by the students, as they are relatable, honest and informative. She has received coverage for her social work in several publications like the Times of India, Femina and Hindustan Times. She is has a degree in Journalism from Lady Shri Ram college, Delhi University.

Pritish is the Managing Trustee and Facilitator at A Cry For Help. He has conducted over 25 workshops in four countries and directly reached out to 1200 students. He is passionate about topics such as bullying and mental health. Having been bullied at a young age himself, he started A Cry for Help when he was only 16 years old. Students find him extremely relatable and honest. Parents have found his workshops to be extremely useful as well. Pritish has worked with Lebenshilfe, the biggest Mental Health organization in Germany, in a program sponsored by the German Government, to gain experience in helping people dealing with severe Mental Health issues. He is very passionate about social entrepreneurship and is a member of numerous global communities of social entrepreneurs.

About the International Collaboration project with HeartSpace, China

• In collaboration with HeartSpace China, we took a group of 6 selected students, accompanied by 4 adults, to China to work with Chinese students. The students participated in team building exercises, workshops & sessions together, culminating in the creation of a self-synthesised manual that deals with all the aforementioned issues that both these organisations aim to tackle. • This is a one of a kind model created by adolescents, for adolescents. • This unique initiative was also a step towards fostering better Indo-China relations & creating a global network of social entrepreneurs. • The model is open source and can be implemented in schools all over the world. Our goal in India, would be to implement the model in as many schools all over the country in order to persuade the HRD Ministry to issue a guideline making it mandatory for schools to work on mental health issues. • We visited Xi’an, China from 23rd to 30th May 2018, where the Social Innovation and Youth Entrepreneurs Summit was conducted from 25th to 27th May. • The project was supported by ChangemakerXChange, a unique community of Global Changemakers and the Ashoka Foundation, a global organization that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs - individuals with innovative and practical ideas for solving social problems. • We received funding from the Robert Bosch Foundation, a charitable institution which is one of the leading private foundations of Europe that is known for its promotion of natural and social sciences, including public health and science, education, society and culture, and international relations.

Impact of The Project

The project helped the Indian and Chinese students realise just how similar their education systems and societies are and how adolescents in both nations suffer with these issues due to extra emphasis on academics and not the holistic development of children. Despite the language gap, the students learnt how to communicate their ideas effectively and work together, learning the value of team work and collective ideation. The students learnt the importance of social innovation, coming up with several unique and offbeat ideas of their own like using virtual reality and creating a television program to sensitise the general populace. The students learnt to step out of their comfort zones and build their ideas into actual implementable models. It helped sow the seed of social innovation in many young minds as well as create greater mental health awareness. All the participants with in depth understanding of the aforementioned issues and a passion to bring about change to the status quo. The conference also helped in cultural synthesis as the students learnt from each others’ experiences as well as those of the experts who taught them. For the six Indian students, it was a life changing moment as they all come from very poor financial conditions and to participate in a project of this scale in another country was a dream come true. It offered them exposure that their economic conditions otherwise severely constrain and helped them grow in confidence. The students eagerly imbibed all they learnt and are very enthusiastic to be student leaders who mentor their peers in this field. Several ideas that the students came up with are viable solutions and these ideas are being implemented by these young leaders themselves in schools across India and China. The students learnt leadership, organisation and ideation. The project was a pioneering effort in the field of mental health awareness with the collaboration being written about in several Indian media outlets.