Coimbatore Corporation and the Aram Foundation Charitable Trust have jointly started counselling and guidance sessions to bring about behavioural change in students who have poor inter-personal skills, are not open and come from troubled families.
At the inauguration held here on Monday, Corporation Commissioner G. Latha said that the Corporation had joined hands with the Foundation to provide the right inputs to students for school days were the formative, impressionable days when it must be ensured that boys and girls did not go off track.
Today, children’s friends were television, mobile phones and tablet computing devices. In accessing these, there was every possibility that students might stumble upon contents that were inappropriate for their age. They must be protected against such contents , she said and reiterated the importance of counselling for students.
Though counselling and guidance were alien to Indian culture until recently, they were the need of the hour as families had turned nuclear. When there were joint families around, students would have either parents or immediate relatives like aunts or uncles to turn to for their emotional needs. The young ones could also look up to grandparents as role models.
All this was absent in nuclear families, she said and went on to add that in current situation, children suffered broken families, alcoholic father and much more.
Urging the students to make best use of the opportunity by sharing their issues, fears and challenges to the counsellors, she said that the lessons they learnt now would put them in good stead in the days to come.
Counsellor Dorai Sundaram said how children of Sri Lankan refugees, when provided the right atmosphere, went on to excel in life.
S. Latha, Managing Trustee, Aram Foundation, said that there would be 20 general sessions and 86 special sessions for students to overcome their problems, if any. Programmes the Foundation had conducted in the past with the Coimbatore Corporation had yielded good results in that the students had started enjoying their childhood.
Mayor in-charge Leelavathi Unni urged the students to make use of the facilities the Corporation offered.
