NPHC has contributed to the emotional development of children, teenagers, and their families while providing a safe environment where troubled young persons can find solace, guidance, and genuine friendships where their emotional injuries can begin to heal. NPHC is committed to helping reduce the rate at which young person become involved in social deviance, as well as reversing the worrying trend where the persons getting involved in crime is getting younger.
The Basis of the NPHC: No Child is Bad by Nature.
Every teenager is at risk of developing anti-social behaviors, the manifestation of criminal behavior is largely a reaction to their environment. An individual’s propensity for anti-social behavior and criminality is directly linked to the level of emotional strain they are experiencing.
To help troubled individuals overcome their behavioral issues and prevent others from developing them, the NPHC has developed a comprehensive educational approach that’s based on effective and well-studied psychological methodologies that address the root causes of anti-social and criminal behavior.
The NPHC primarily engages these vulnerable groups through:
- Educational talks that are conducted in schools to quickly build general awareness and to discreetly identify individuals in need of immediate help.
- Supervised sleepaway camps designed to provide an environment where troubled teens will be compelled to relax their guard and open up to NPHC teachers and volunteers.
- Private guidance sessions where troubled individuals can undergo methodical assessment and engaged appropriately to help them overcome their difficulties. Private guidance sessions also provide the opportunity to engage both the troubled individual and their parents or family at the same time.
- Use of music and art therapy in many of its activities. In private sessions, music and art therapy plays an especially important role and is used as a tool that enables unresponsive persons to indirectly communicate their innermost thoughts.
PROJECT RESULT
To date, the NPHC has given talks to over 60 institutions in Johor Bahru, with each talk attended by an average of 800 to 1000 students; and there has touched the lives of around 50,000 people so far. From mending broken families to turning depressed individuals away from suicide, to giving purpose and fulfilment to wayward souls and calming the anger of society’s forsaken.
WHAT IMPACT HAS THIS PROJECT CREATED IN THE COMMUNITY/ NATION?
- Reducing Juvenile Involvement in Crime and Social Deviance, Including Violence
- Instilling Self-Discipline for a More Productive Community
- Improving the Overall Health and Well-Being Of Everyone
- Alleviating Depression in Young People
- Getting Our Children Off Drugs
- A Place Where Ready Help is Always Available
- Fulfilling a Basic Human Need
HOW WAS THIS PROJECT HELP TO ADVANCE THE CHOSEN SDG?
NPHC’s efforts in providing community-wide mitigation of social deviance in young persons and their happiness have direct benefits on health, economic productivity, and stability of everyone in its community.
Universal Care
The NPHC does not discriminate when it comes to providing its services, which has been instrumental in helping the most vulnerable components of society. It is this universal nature of the NPHC that has been so effective at providing wide-scale support to everyone, whether it is combating the rise of depression in the majority of its local community or helping dissuade young individuals from getting involved in criminal elements.
Creating Self-Perpetuating Positivity
This wide-scale effort also has significant spill-over of positive effects across all other areas of society. Providing a safe and pro-social environment for everyone (in which negative influences are absent) is the best way to ensure the universal development of good habits and strong work ethics in that community, setting it up for future economic development prosperity. And, with a stronger economy and better individual and community participation in it comes better access to healthcare, goods, and amenities.
A Responsible Public that Responds Appropriately to Epidemics and other
Social order and respect for rules are highly important when facing large-scale emergencies where the actions of even lone individuals can significantly impact a sequence of events. The current COVID19 epidemic is an excellent example demonstrating the importance of a highly responsible society free from the influence of anti-sociality at all layers of society.
As mentioned above, even small groups of anti-social individuals can seriously aggravate a situation like the current epidemic. Chances are, the person who breaks quarantine protocol, gets infected, and becomes a superspreader, is an anti-social young person who places his or her self-interest above the safety of others. Individuals who take advantage of online media platforms to spread misinformation are also most likely to be young and anti-social. Both of these factors present dangerous situations in an epidemic.
This fact thus doubly establishes the importance of the NPHC, which targets anti-social problems at the source in wide sections of the population. To date, the NPHC has reached out to at least 50,000 students alone, accounting for about 10% of the city’s population. With each anti-social person taken off the radar, societies can breathe a sigh of relief as that is one variable for cause for concern.
Other SDGs that this project has directly or indirectly created positive impact to people and society:
NPHC has focused its efforts in accordance with these goals and has done its best to make its social services highly available and accessible to all members of its community. Free services, extensive grass-roots connections, highly-trained volunteer staff, and far-reaching assistance programmes are justifications necessary to ensure that its services get to where they are needed most.
In addition to advancing the mission of the 3rd UNSDG, the NPHC’s activities impact many other areas of the UNSDG:
- Goal 4: Ending Poverty, Providing Quality Education
- Goal 5: Achieving Gender Equality
- Goal 8, 10: Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities
