Of the 20 million orphans in India, less than 5000 get adopted per year. We promote adoption by supporting adoptive parents through the adoption process. We identify children in orphanages without parental/guardian contact and move them into the adoption stream. Our research across 200 homes with 11500 children, shows more than 9% such children languish in an orphanage instead of being in the adoption stream. We conduct grassroots level workshops to build awareness about the adoption process.
The problem is 2 fold - 1) Low level of awareness amongst grass root level workers, civil society, doctors, social workers, police, judiciary, NGO's and other stakeholders. Lengthy and cumbersome processes, inadequate support for Adoptive parents 2) Lengthy and cumbersome adoption processes, inadequate support for Adoptive parents. Our findings from the data we collected across 4 states in India show that many children are not in the adoption stream due to lack of knowledge by society.
Our objective is to sensitize different stakeholders on a large scale such as grass root level workers - Anganwadi workers & helpers, ASHA workers, CCIs, Specialized Adoption Agencies (SAA), Child Welfare Committees, hospitals, medical colleges, police & judiciary on safe abandoning of children & thereby, protecting children & increasing the number of children in adoption. This will nip the issue in the bud & help move children directly into adoption rather than an orphanage
This project has the potential to impact over 10000 orphaned and abandoned children across India, giving them the chance to be a part of loving families where they will be nurtured to reach their full potential. By sensitizing stakeholders, the project also has the potential to push more orphans into the adoption stream. Changes in processes/practices will bring ongoing and permanent benefits.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
