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NGO's Associated with Us

HAQ: Centre for Child Rights
works towards the recognition, promotion and protection of rights of all children. HAQ believes that child rights and children's concerns have to be mainstreamed into all developmental planning and action, and must also become a core developmental indicator.

To carry forward its mandate HAQ undertakes research and documentation. It is actively engaged in public education and advocacy on children's rights. It also seeks to serve as a resource and support base for individuals and groups dealing with children at every level. It not only provides information and referral service but also training and capacity building for all those working with children or on issues concerning them, and the children themselves.

Over the last nine years HAQ has been working on areas children and governance, violence and abuse of children, child trafficking and juvenile justice. HAQ provides of legal support to children in need, particularly those who are victims of abuse or are in conflict with law.

Besides developing skills for quick and incisive scanning of policy documents, commenting on them, creating database through documentation and research, this has necessitated working with existing networks, building of alliances, building partnership with other actors/stakeholders such as the bureaucrats, parliamentarians, judges and lawyers, police and media.

CHILDLINE
is a 24-hours free telephone help-line service, which can be accessed by a child in distress or an adult on his/her behalf, by dialing the number 1098. It provides emergency assistance and outreach services to a child in distress and subsequently, based upon the child's need, rescues the child and refers him/her to an appropriate organisation for long-term rehabilitation, follow up and care. It is the only service of its kind (a Government of India - civil society partnership) operating in 74 cities and towns in India, offering a bouquet of comprehensive child protection services through its referral network of over 3,000 civil society organisations, academic institutions, state governments, corporations, youth and children. It aims to extend its services to every district in the nation by 2020. To date, CHILDLINE has responded to 10 million calls and assisted 3 million children.

Through its network in 74 cities, the CHILDLINE Service aims at:

  1. Responding to calls on the national toll-free number 1098 and provision of emergency outreach services for children in need of care and protection,
  2. Linking children to services for their long term rehabilitation,
  3. Establishment of a national network for the tracking of missing children,
  4. Compilation of a national database of child protection related services,
  5. Creating awareness about the 1098 help-line (CHILDLINE) number,
  6. Training and sensitisation of the Allied Systems to the needs of children in need of care and protection, thus preventing children from dropping out from the system,
  7. Research, documentation, awareness and advocacy on issues related to child protection, and
  8. Identifying gaps in services and influencing social policy to bridge the gaps.

CHILDLINE is a project of the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), Government of India. CHILDLINE India Foundation (CIF) has been established by the Government of India as an umbrella organisation to identify, provide support services and to monitor efficient service delivery of the centres at various locations. CIF serves as a link between the Ministry and the NGOs in the field. The Secretary of the Ministry is the Chairperson of the CIF Governing Board. CHILDLINE is a partnership platform bringing together the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, UNICEF, the Department of Telecommunications, street and community youth, non-profit organisations, academic institutions, the corporate sector and concerned individuals CHILDLINE in each city operates through a structured network of voluntary organisations, including nodal, support, collaborative and resource organisations, under the overall supervision of the City Advisory Board. The collaborative organisations function as call centres and have a team of trained youth, supervised by a professional social worker, who respond to calls on a 24 hours basis. Within minutes of receiving a call, the team rushes to the child and attends to the crisis at hand. This may involve going to a police station, or to the Juvenile Justice Board, or to the Child Welfare Committee, or to a hospital for medical help and constant follow-up till the child tides through the crisis, after which options for long term rehabilitation are presented to the child.