There are 153 million orphans in the world. 8 million children live in institutions (orphanages) around the world. Many of them languish in these institutes without access to nutritious food, clean water, quality education, and medical care.

In India, we have 20 million orphaned children, and out of it, about 0.3 percent are orphans in the traditional sense where both parents have passed away.  The rest are children who have been abandoned,  rescued from child trafficking, or child marriage,  children who are lost, children growing up in abusive family environments,  etc.  An appalling number of  2.38 lakhs of orphans live in Child care Institutions (orphanages) both private and government in  India  (NCPCR,  March  2018).  Surprisingly, 80% of these kids have a living family member. Most families wouldn’t leave their children in institutions if they had the right support to care for them. The fact is, many children are in orphanages because their families are poor and can’t afford to feed or educate them. This is no reason to be institutionalized.

To address this issue and to prevent children from entering into institutions in the first place, Miracle Foundation India has partnered with UNICEF to create a model of a public-private partnership promoting family-based / alternative care across the four states in India – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar & Jharkhand. Through this partnership, we are aiming for the following-

• Capacity building of child care protection functionaries at the state, district level, is enhanced in standards of family-based / alternative care across the four states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar & Jharkhand
• Enhancement of the Child Care Institute (orphanage) functionaries across the two states of Maharashtra & Gujarat in their standards of family-based / alternative care
• Demonstration of a scalable and replicable pilot model of family strengthening aimed at prevention, deinstitutionalization-reunification, integration of children with family-based / alternative care in select demonstration sites (village/slum/ CCI) in states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

We have successfully trained 2300 government officials till date and have the technical expertise to replicate this model across regions. To know more about our capacity building and training program, write to us at safelyhome@miraclefoundation.org.