Established in 2016
The Ashoka Centre for Well-being (ACWB) is a non-aligned Centre offering counselling and psychological support for students, staff and faculty at Ashoka University. The ACWB was established to provide a safe space that offers free and confidential individual and group counseling support. It is the only Centre of its kind in India with its focus on capacity building at every level of an organization.
Team ACWB
We are a team of professionally qualified counsellors led by Founder and Director Arvinder J Singh. The Centre provides an emotionally safe space for students, staff and faculty at Ashoka to share their concerns, uncover their strengths and build resilience. All our counsellors are queer affirmative.
Our Vision
Operating with a mindset of well-being, instead of diagnosis, the ACWB focuses on the preventive, clinical, and promotional aspects of mental well-being. The Centre’s focus lies in promoting the value of good mental health to improve individual coping capacity through skill-building.
Ashoka's residential setting offers a unique opportunity for students to intimately be part of a strong, opinionated and active community. In this context, students may become vulnerable to stress and anxiety that comes with achieving perfect grades and coping with the social demands of campus life.
The physical and emotional separation from hometowns and families adds to the aforementioned adjustment issues. Consequently, students have been found to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. The Centre is focused on early intervention and capacity building.
“Members of a community are best suited to support each other. Our team of counselors, professionals and volunteers offer a range of services to help Ashoka community in building emotional resources and developing better coping strategies“- Arvinder J. Singh.
Join us on Tuesday, 25 May 2021 | 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Only for Ashoka Staff
Join Dr. Arvinder Singh on Thursday, 6 May 2021 from 5:00 - 6:30 PM
The ACWB empowers students to gain insight and find their own coping strategies.
Understanding the effect of the pandemic on people’s mental health and well-being.
Ex-volunteers share their experience of working with the Ashoka Centre for Well-Being.
Reaching out during COVID-19
During these extraordinary circumstances, the centre rose to the challenge and continued to provide emotional support to Ashokans through the virtual medium. We swiftly moved to conducting our sessions on google hangouts and extending our telephone helpline services as well. A peer support group was formed and trained which ran a few interactions titled “We Care” on zoom. Diffusion of responsibility at the student-level led to ease in reaching out to those in need as well as covered greater ground and empowered students to be the change agents through small but significant gestures.
A sensitising and helpline training workshop was organised for the SANG Team. SANG is a student led initiative consisting of ex students from Ashoka as well as other universities and are involved with volunteering for the hunger helpline during Covid times.The central focus of the workshop was to provide the team members with first responders training as well as working with the vulnerable population.