Lifeline Foundation hosted the 20th Befrienders India National Conference in Kolkata from 3rd to 5th February, ’23
–Ms S Chatterjee
Among all the social problems that plague us, mental health issues are almost rarely mentioned unless something drastic hits the headlines. Like physical wellness, mental healthcare is very important especially for us in India which has the highest suicide rates in the world. Lifeline Foundation is a nonprofit set up in 1996 by the late Ravinder Singh and his wife Suksham Singh. The NGO has been providing a healing touch to those wishing to be heard. The organization which runs totally on volunteer support is a chapter of Befrienders India which is affiliated with UK-based Befrienders Worldwide.
Lifeline Foundation in its 26th year hosted recently the 20th Befrienders India National Conference that opened at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Golpark on 3rd February 23 and it continued till 5th February.
Dr. Lakshmi Vijayakumar, Founder, and Director, Sneha opened with her keynote address. The other distinguished panelists present included Chief Guest Ms. Anuradha Sen, Director, Helpage India, and Dr. Mathew P John. General Secretary, Antara, Prof. Dr. R T Goswami, Director, Techno International, New Town. Dr. Peter Castelino, Managing Trustee, COOJ Mental Health Foundation.
Befriends India has 14 centers all across India and some of the conference participants were from Befrienders Worldwide (U.K), Lifeline Foundation (Kolkata), Sneha (Chennai), Nesam( Erode), Saath( Ahmadabad), Sanjeevani (Trivandrum), Samaritans (Mumbai), Sumaitri ( New Delhi), Roshni (Hyderabad) Connecting NGO (Pune), Cooj (Goa), Jeevan (Jamshedpur), Thanal (Kozhikode) .
Befrienders Worldwide has 350 centers in 45 countries with 40,000 volunteers. Befrienders India came into being in November of 1992 and includes 300 volunteers.
Lifeline Foundation was all about breaking the stigma of mental health and opening up to disturbed or distressed people about unspoken issues of human life that are often not addressed.
The organization believes in the four pillars of support -befriending, empathy, non-judgemental, and confidentiality. To date through its helplines, Lifeline has touched over 78000 people.
Services include tele helplines from 10 am to 10 pm, face-to-face sessions, community awareness, outreach activities in men’s and women’s correctional centers, CISF and Air Force stations in Eastern India, St Paul’s Cathedral Friendship Centre, Kolkata Police, Welfare Society for the Blind, Educational Institutes, Go Yellow Calcutta! (on World Suicide Prevention Day), and Kolkata Metro Rail.
According to Suksham Singh, the conference was about sharing and learning the best practices being carried out by other centers across India. Plans for the future include providing mental wellness support towards suicide prevention as a twenty-four-hour helpline. It also wishes to start a support group for families who have had suicide.
Sharing her thoughts on an inaugural day, Suksham Singh stated, “We have completed 26 years of service in Kolkata, so we happily hosted this conference. We started today and we have three great days of learning from each other and hope to imbibe the best practices being done at different centers. The mission and vision for the next few years are to become a 24-hour helpline service and to start a support group for families that have had a suicide. There are various NGOs doing good work and if a caller is wishing to address any problem in a specific area we give the caller a referral. So our referrals are a very important part of our service.”
News Mania Desk/Media Release
