Muskurayega India

Activity log of mental health counsellors and volunteers National Service Scheme

A activity log of mental health counsellors and volunteers National Service Scheme (NSS) , working under Muskurayega India, an initiative of National Service Scheme –Uttar Pradesh (U.P), GOI, in collaboration with UNICEF-UP and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) .

National Service Scheme (NSS) program was launched under Ministry of Youth Affairs (GOI) and Sports in 37 universities across India. The NSS program brings students and teachers together for undertaking tasks of national development.

The COVID-19 has presented a great challenge to India. The lockdown and the containment of people is leading to loss in business, fear of the virus, loss of livelihood, fear of career or job and increase household workload. All this is manifesting into mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, domestic violence or stigma among people and students. Seeing this, NSS-Uttar Pradesh in collaboration with UNICEF-U.P and Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), has launched Muskurayega India, to provide mental health support through phones. The support is being provided by 300 teaching faculties of various universities in U.P, in which this app is aiding them to keep and share counseling records and activities. Likewise, the students enrolled as NSS volunteers are supporting COVID awareness and prevention activities for migrants, senior citizens, pregnant-lactating women, and among peers. The app helps them record and share activities with NSS office. The features of app are:

1. Profile of caller and counsellors- The feature captures socio-demographic profile of the caller as well as counsellor

2. Easy recording of mental health issues- This feature reduce the effort of counsellor to manually enter the data

3. Actions advised and follow up- Counselor through this feature keep a track of advice and take a regular follow up.

4. Activity log- This feature enables the volunteers to share communication and development activities efficiently .

5. Resource materials: The feature provide evidence based, scientific repository of resource materials to the counselor and volunteer on COVID, maternal and child health, mental health, nutrition and other related themes.