Rahul Bose launches initiative against child sexual abuse

Mumbai, July 26 (IANS) Bollywood actor Rahul Bose along with actress Vidya Balan came together to support the eradication of child sexual abuse (CSA) as Rahul launched "HEAL: NGO against child sexual abuse".

Talking about the initiative on Tuesday evening, Rahul said: "This is one of the causes that we do not want to talk much about but it is a very sensitive issue that needs to be addressed. And you would be surprised to know that our country is one of the largely affected countries. But what is more surprising is this is one of the issues that exist in European countries as well, so it has nothing to do with socio-economic background; it happens everywhere in the world."

The initiative will be followed by an online campaign which will be supported by many celebrities of Bollywood including Karan Johar, Kalki Koechlin, Shabana Azmi, among others.

"Apart from conducting workshops in various schools and train people to council and help victims of abuse, we have made four ad films for our digital campaign which will be going on social media supported by many collogues from our fraternity. People like Karan Johar, Shabana Azmi, Atul Kasbekar, Vidya Balan, Kalki Koechlin, Konkona Sen Sharma, Sashi Tharoor, Anil Kumble among others will be part of the social media campaign," the actor added.

"Being a student of sociology I am aware of child sexual abuse. I always wanted to avoid knowing about the reality as it's heartbreaking. But when Rahul told me about HEAL, I said I would be more than happy to do any kind of contribution to raise funds or anything to create awareness for the cause," Vidya said.

The HEAL Foundation has so far, trained many individuals in schools and supported around 60 survivors of CSA. In near future, the NGO wants to expand their work and reach out to more schools, children and victims to help, train and create awareness.