How this social entrepreneur has been rescuing children during the pandemic
Mumbai-based brand-strategist-turned-social-entrepreneur Akancha Srivastava launched a helpline to rescue children who’ve lost their parents to COVID-19 and are left to fend for themselves.
In 2021, a passerby noticed an intellectually disabled girl lying on a railway station platform in Prayagraj. Noticing that a lot of men standing around were passing comments on the child, the woman became worried and called Akancha Srivastava, Founder of Akancha Against Harassment and the Akancha Srivastava Foundation, to report the situation.
Akancha, who also runs a child rescue helpline, requested the woman to stand by while she arranged help for the girl.
“I asked the reporter to share a video of the child, which I then posted on my Twitter account, tagging all the senior law enforcers of the country, especially the DGP of Uttar Pradesh, the chairperson of NCW, among others, while also calling the ADGP,” Akancha tells SocialStory.
“I requested him to help this child and urged that it was not only important to rescue the child but also to ensure that the child is safe,” she adds.
Akancha Srivastava
Not only did they rescue her within an hour, but also took her to a shelter, cleaned her up, and gave her fresh clothes.
Akancha’s child rescue helpline has come to the aid of many such children during the pandemic. In fact, more than 23 children have been rescued and rehabilitated so far.
Child rescue
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken innumerable lives. In many tragic cases, many parents have lost their lives, leaving their children to fend for themselves. While some of them may be lucky enough to be cared for by their relatives, this is not the case for a majority of the underserved.
On April 30, Akancha came across an article that talked about the plight of children who lost their parents to COVID-19. She learnt that many were left to fend for themselves.
“So, I got together five of my teammates to do something for the children, During this time, we learnt that shelter homes turn away children in case they’re going through a cash crunch,” she says.
The team joined their heads and pooled resources of paediatricians and other child-care professionals who could help with discounted work for the children.
“We came across many children who were at risk of being trafficked, illegally adopted, and were susceptible to many other challenges. We created a helpline so that people could help identify children who have become COVID-19 orphans or are just left to fend for themselves,” says Akancha.
On May 3, they launched a helpline for child rescue, announcing a WhatsApp number for people to report any such children and asked them to share the coordinates of the child so that the team could get in touch with the nearby law enforcement agencies.
The helpline caught the attention of multiple celebrities, including Kareena Kapoor Khan and Richa Chadha, who shared the details of the helpline on their social media. “By the next evening, due to the heavy inflow of calls, the helpline had crashed!” says Akancha.
Not all of these calls, however, were complaints. They also included several child traffickers, one of whom Akancha even trapped and reported.
After this, Akancha also started educating people about trafficking and illegal adoption. They soon began receiving many complaints where people would even share the phone numbers of the scammers and trafficking groups. Within minutes, the numbers would get deactivated out of fear of being caught, says Akancha.
“I even received death threats for doing this work, but I made it clear on social media that I was not going to step back. We want to ensure that no child is physically, emotionally or mentally abused,” says Akancha
So far, the team has rescued over 23 children through the helpline: +91 7777030393.
The team is also raising funds to support the children further through the crowdfunding platform ImpactGuru. This is to build the team and tech support, provide support through medical and other requirements, build capacity for the orphanages and get mental health support for these kids through professionals.
Fighting cybercrimes
Akancha Against Harassment is a non-profit and government-recognised organisation that aims to prevent cyber abuse by bridging the gap between the victims and law enforcement. Having left behind a job as a brand strategist, Akancha Srivastava founded the non-profit in 2017 to reach out to the victims of cybercrime.
It has conducted more than 113 on-ground and over 221 online workshops on cybercrime prevention in over 29 cities.
Akancha launched a helpline number so that the victims could reach out to them while maintaining anonymity unless an FIR was filed. To ensure that, this helpline is available 24x7. They also launched a chatbot that caters to these complaints.
“We launched a chatbot using Haptik that aids the user to anonymously share their complaints, and it responds in the most comforting manner. But in case, that is not enough at the moment, the chatbot asks for information and permission to further the process,” says Akancha.
The chatbot requests the email ID of the victim along with the evidence of the cybercrime. These are then flagged, based on the kind of threat that they are facing. In cases of rape and death threats, the complaints are ‘red-flagged’ and the team gets back to the victim.
“We ask the victim if they want to share their details, and then take their permission to file a police report. Once the permission is granted, we connect them to an officer who hears them out and gives them the deserved justice,” says Akancha.
The impact that Akancha has had so far
The AAH chat helpline has recorded over 37,000 messages, with an average response time of two seconds, and an average time of 5.7 minutes spent on the helpline. The chatbot is available in two languages – Hindi and English.
Haptik, the company that developed the chatbot also won Google’s ‘AI for Social Good’ award for the strong social cause behind it.
Some of the major crimes that AAH caters to are – cyberbullying, cyberstalking, cyber grooming, cyber and revenge pornography, morphing, voyeurism, and imposters. In the last 4.5 years, over 97+ FIRs have been filed by AAH.
Challenges and support
The shift to running something in the social impact sector was a bit of a challenge.
“I started from a phase where I had nothing to hold onto. I had little information about how to run a social organisation. But the more I learnt about the nitty-gritty aspects, I realised how difficult to run a social impact organisation,” shares Akancha.
Moreover, getting people to work for the cause hasn’t been a cakewalk. Akancha says that instilling the same passion among the professionals was quite a challenging feat.
“Thanks to the goodwill I had in the industry and with renowned board members like Vijay Shekar Sharma (Founder and CEO of Paytm), Krishna Prasad (Commissioner of Police, Pimpri Chinchwad, Pune) among others, I was able to get that needed credibility to run the social organisation,” says Akancha.
Edited by Kanishk Singh