Communication within Family is Indispensable

Families have played a key role in the context of the pandemic. Photograph: Susanna Carpintero.

“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” – Michael J. Fox.

Family is the glue that binds everyone closer together and the music that brings harmony. It is the biggest strength and support contributing the most towards our success and personal growth. Faith and communication are the key essences of a family which give a child the roots to stand tall and strong, make the right choices and to make difficult decisions in their life.

Children are like clay easy to be moulded. While working with VHT (Victims of Human Trafficking) teenagers, we realised that often parents of these children have themselves been deprived of the warmth, love and security of a family and have been bereft of a happy childhood. As a result, when it comes to raising their own family, they often fail to show the same love and care that keeps the family together and ultimately these kids have to face the outburst of the anger.

To bridge this gap we contribute through our LSE (Life Skill Empowerment) project where we try to build self-confidence and understanding in these children preparing them to cope with the struggles and harsh realities of life. We are available to listen to their questions and try to solve every problem through healthy discussions and we feel rewarded when we see good results.

Roy (name changed), an adolescent participating in LSE, lives with his mother in the current lockdown situation. His mother is a Victim of Human Trafficking and stays with her husband. Roy always hated staying with them as he was not his biological father; hence, Roy was not ready to accept their relationship. However, during the lockdown they were practically locked among the four walls and forced to stay together. It was a testing time for each of them. On the one hand, Roy was staying with two people who never received good guidance, education and life skills in their life. On the other hand, Roy was learning all of this through the LSE sessions conducted by our team.

During the current difficult situation we know that we will hear incidents of domestic violence or of students getting victimized falling prey to their parent’s temper.

However, Roy is one of the luckiest children to have parents who could communicate with him and nurture a sense of family amongst them. Roy is now enjoying this new family bonding and the three are benefitting from the love and support for each other thus helping them survive through this unprecedented situation.

Lockdown has brought something good in someone’s life! Every cloud does have a silver lining!