Safety Club Sahas Foundation is a Non-profit organization that trains children between the age group of 2 to 8 on basic safety skills.
Statistics show that over 60,000 children in India die from accidents every year and many more are injured and disabled for life due to accidents that can be prevented. 1 in 2 children (53% of boys and girls) in India face some form of abuse while growing up.
There is no formal training that a child goes through in India to be aware of a good touch or a bad touch, and how to react when someone makes you uncomfortable. While parents are protective of their children and will give their lives to keep their children safe, they do not have a handy tool or book to review and explain the safety concepts to young children with ease and without inhibition.
Keeping the above facts in mind, the founders – Chandana Raju and Sumana Rao wanted to empower children with safety skills so that children can be safe in every situation. As a 1st step to the solution, they authored a children’s book called “Safety Club”. This child friendly book contains attractive illustrations, and small and witty poems to engage children. It can be used as a tool by parents and teachers to educate children on critical safety skills.
The book covers topics that include safety at home, on the road, safety when the kids are on their own and finally makes the children aware of their responsibility to keep the planet safe. The book also contains important numbers to remember, phone and internet safety and finally activities at the end that can help them internalize safety concepts. The illustrations are so intuitive that a young child between the age of 2-7 will be able to see the visuals and grasp the concepts. It was also done keeping in mind children who cannot read yet due to their age or literacy, so they can understand the concepts through the illustrations even if they cannot read.
We researched several safety programs in US and India to come up with an effective safety skills program that can be implemented with the young children of India. We started Sahas Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the goal of empowering every child across India with safety skills. We developed this website to make educational resources to prevent child sexual abuse, available to parents and children across India with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds
Our Mission:
Our mission is to empower every parent and teacher with resources to educate their children about safety skills, so they can always be safe.
Our Goal:
To share tools, resources and data with every parent and teacher to increase awareness of the child safety in India
Safety club takes the ‘train the teacher’ approach.
The digital copy of the Safety Club book and the teacher training videos are available under resources.
Teachers & parents can download and print the book, watch the teacher training video and voila they will be ready to conduct a 45 minute workshop with their children.
Parents and teachers also have the option of just playing the Safety Club Animated video to their children. The video does a good job of explaining safety concepts.
The safety concepts need to be reiterated every 6 months to children from 2 to 7 years so children imbibe the concepts.
We have other relevant resources on our YouTube channel . To view please click on the YouTube icon on the right hand corner of our website.
Chandana Raju completed her MS in Project Management from George Washington University, BE Civil from Hyderabad C.B.I.T. She is a director admin/HRD for PLRC, a family run business, focusing on real estate/construction for over the last 50 years.
Sumana Rao has done her MBA and MS in Information Systems from University of Texas and works as a Global Product Marketing Leader for Trimble a company based out of California.
