Counselling services for children and young people
"Turn over a new leaf" is our rebuilding lives programme through counselling. We aim to create safe spaces necessary for children and young persons’ development, wellbeing and growth. Through our “Turn a new leaf” programme we aim to be there for children and young people when they need us. We will achieve this by raising awareness of abuse. We will empower children and young people to make sense of what happens to them, to say no to cruelty and exploitation and feel okay about saying it. We aim to make young people feel supported and comfortable in their skin.
This includes creating therapeutic and counselling spaces. We believe it is essential to have safe spaces where children and young persons can turn up to. Especially because the understanding of abuse is immensely low in our society as a whole. This leaves little room for talking about issues of discrimination, bullying, sexual abuse and harassment, neglect, exploitation and drug addiction.
The result of not knowing and keeping silent on these issues is that these become untouched taboos hard to tackle and break.
CEO SCYP
I am the “hope”
Break the taboos, as my life is more important than taboos…
My pain does not define me, my strength does…
Talking about what makes a child or young person uncomfortable and hinders their growth needs attention. We see babies as young as 3 years old raped and murdered, and countless young lives being subjected to extreme cruelty through child labour, sexual abuse, maltreatment, slavery, bullying and neglect. Ignoring what is happening to children, young and vulnerable people and not allowing them to come out and speak up perpetuates the abuse.
Seeing abuse happening to children and young people at a high level and scale should be enough for us to break the taboos of talking about it.
We aim to be there for children so they could start their lives afresh without any guilt of things they are not responsible for. Through “Your SCYP” centres, we aim to provide therapeutic and counselling services and support those who have been abused or are at risk of abuse. We aim to make society accept that children need a better, kinder and safer world. Above all, they deserve to be listened to.
We aim to set up “Your SCYP” centres for children, young people and their families in Pakistan and aim to:
- provide one-to-one counselling
- school-based learning programmes
- promote safeguarding, welfare, prevention, safety and equality of children and young people
- provide training services to faith institutions, schools, organisations and individuals of identifying and preventing abuse
It is not easy to break the taboos of keeping silent. But we can do it together for children and young people.
SCYP CEO
Don’t ignore the signs and expressions of abuse and don't let abuse happen in the first place. We believe adults also need to know that it is not okay to be cruel to children and it is not okay to ignore abuse. It is wrong and must not happen to anyone. It’s time we prevent abuse and support young lives turn a new leaf.
