KOCHI: Parents are the primary caregivers and the first line of defence when it comes to protecting children from social evils such as substance abuse. Those who spend quality time with their children and understand their perspectives create a safe, nurturing, and positive environment at home, fostering healthy development. And here, mothers play a vital role.
Empowering the mother, in a way, amounts to curbing problems affecting the youth. This is what the ‘Project VENDA’ initiative of Kochi-based NGO Fourth Wave Foundation has been doing across Kerala. Executed in collaboration with Vienna-based Women without Borders group, Project Venda follows the global ‘MotherSchools: Parenting for Peace’. “They are not schools in the traditional sense,” says Fourth Wave Foundation director Diana Vincent.
“We conduct a series of workshops connecting mothers to share their experiences, discuss concerns, learn from each other and discover their power to bring peaceful solutions to common problems affecting the youth.”
Dr Edit Schlaffer, founder and executive director of Women without Borders, explains that the NGO has been “working from the bottom up and empowering the female leaders of tomorrow at the individual, community and global levels”.
She believes that empowering mothers is key to building resilience in homes and regions vulnerable to social evils. The Parenting for Peace movement, Edit adds, focuses on “mothers as changemakers and agents of prevention”.
In Kerala, over 300 mothers have been part of the MotherSchools programme. And Project VENDA has educated and empowered thousands of children to say a firm “NO” to drugs using a range of well-planned initiatives that have been recognised by the UN Office of Drug and Crime.
“Project VENDA’s work with adolescent girls with drug dependency issues has been one of the key achievements in this journey,” says Diana. “Now, through MotherSchools, mothers, wives and the girl child facing substance dependency issues find the strength to seek help because they know where to go for help. They now have women within their support groups who are trained to help them make the transition.”