Sometimes a project you’re working on leaves such a huge impact on you, that it forever changes the way you feel about something. This is exactly what happened to Ahsan Khan, whose take on sexual harassment and child abuse aspired him to play the role of Paa Imtiaz in drama serial Udaari. When he stepped inside the shoes of a child molester, through his role in the drama, the realization of how long lasting and traumatizing impact child abuse can have on a child became even deeper.

Ahsan’s role in the drama influenced him so strongly that it lead him to donate 20% of his earnings from Udaari to victims of child abuse.

When this drama received a notice from PEMRA due to parents’ complaints on it not being a “family drama” and for spreading vulgarity, it revealed how trying to raise awareness on something so prevalent, damaging and important for children and this society could receive such a negative reaction from people. It highlighted how deeply rooted the taboo attached to the issue of child abuse is and how much work still needs to be done to eradicate that mindset in this society. As people refuse to acknowledge or talk about this issue, the incidences of child abuse continue to rise.

According to a 2015 CBA (Child Abuse Report), 10 children are abused everyday (and that is just the ones that get reported)

Now that the drama serial Udaari is coming to an end, Ahsan Khan wants to continue spreading awareness. Along with working with an NGO, he has started a campaign against child abuse from The Youth Summit 2.0, Sialkot.

The Youth Summit 2.0 (which is a sequel of the Youth Summit 2015) is a platform through which awareness is raised among the youth on topics that otherwise go neglected. In the summit sessions, various successful celebrities, activists, doctors and philosophers address to the youth of Sialkot, Lahore and Islamabad in order to bring a change in their mindset and to remove various stigmas attached to important issues in our society.

Soam Mohsin, the director of the summit sessions believes that nobody other than Ahsan Khan could do a better job at raising awareness regarding child abuse and sensibly help bring many wrongdoers to shame.

The summit sessions will officially start from 17th September in Sialkot and Ahsan Khan is going to be the first speaker among many others. We wish them luck and applaud Ahsan Khan as well as the organizers of the summit for taking such a great initiative.

Cover image via: Dawn.com