by Asmi Kothari

Ritu Shyamsukha’s relationship with her son Harshit inspired her to take up a project, in conjunction with the Rotary Club, to bring counseling to local schools. project with the rotary club. Harshit was entering his teens and Ritu noticed some unusual changes in him and was not able to deal with it. He would not communicate or discuss school, developed temper tantrums, never did his school work, bullied his younger brother, fought with him, etc.

That’s when Ritu thought there must be many more parents who must be going through this. And she decided to take an initiative and do something about it.

She created an initiative to bring counseling to children as her project in Landmark’s Self-expression and Leadership program which started on June of 2017 with Mr. Pushpinder as her coach. The city where Ritu is from, Alwar, is a small city in India which did not have any counselors or counseling in schools. She started this project with the help of lots of different people and groups – here local rotary club, a counselor named Ranjeet Rajput, parents and teenagers from Alwar, the city’s school management, and even financial sponsorship from Shree Om Sai Packaging

She has accomplished holding a session with the management and teachers of 5 reputed schools in Alwar about inculcating counseling as a part of the curriculum. She also organized an awareness program with the parents and teenagers. She later arranged a teachers training program at a government school. And lastly, the project offered 5 free DMIT tests and a free counseling to these parents and children.

Her future plans include empowering the counselor to start his own center in Alwar so that they have counseling made available in their city itself.

She mentioned that landmark helped her a lot with the leadership, planning the work, enrollment and registration conversation, dealing with breakdowns and becoming powerful again.