Dr. Kiran Modi - Trustee and Executive Director, Udayan Care, New Delhi

Udayan Care is slowly being recognized for its work with children. Tell us more about the work you do.

Udayan Care is currently running four projects in various parts of New Delhi, namely- Udayan Ghars, Udyan Shalini Fellowships, Life Skills programmes and Know Your Body Programme.

The Udayan Ghar is a residential programme for run-away and street children. Currently we have homes in South Delhi, East Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. Udayan Shalini is a scholarship and mentoring programme for girls in the community around the homes. Life and Skills Programme is a vocational training programme. Know Your Body Programme is a health education programme where teachers are trained on educating children on health issues.

Udayan Care recently completed its 10 years. What are the transitions that the organisation has seen ?

In the last 10 years there are two major things Udayan Care has been able to achieve. Firstly, it has been able to create a base of highly committed volunteers known as Mentor Mothers. These mentor mothers run each of the homes independently with commitment that is unmatched. Secondly, we have been able to create a pool of Mentors who groom the girls very closely under the Udayan Shalini Programme.

The organisation was registered as a trust in the year 1994 and the first of the homes came in 1996. A big gap was observed when we studied the lives of children in various institutions. They were in institutions but still orphans. There was no concept of parenting or fostering. Today, as the number of homes has grown to 5 at least 70 children have received this parenting. Besides, 300 girls have not only got financial assistance but complete mentoring. The belief that drove us was that the children needed a cross of institutional care and foster family, something that we have followed till the day.

What are the challenges you come across while working on this differently traveled path of inclusion ?

The biggest challenge is erasing the trauma that the children have undergone in the past. The other challenges are in terms promoting acceptance of the children amongst the community surrounding the homes and their integration with the society. The challenge of social integration is addressed at the onset by sending children to best of schools to study.

There are few challenges that we see emerging in the future, in terms of finding jobs for the children and their marriage. It is unfortunate that some employers have doubts about emotional competencies of children, an attitude we are working with corporates to change.

There are several organisations working on this issue. How are you networking with them to increase the impact ?

We are actively collaborating with Child Line, the help line for children in distress. The children recommended by them come to our homes. Udayan Care benefits a lot from the capacity building programmes of "Beyond Business" an initiative of National HRD Network. We also have been a part of capacity building programmes of Charities Aid Foundation India.

In a small way we have created our own network of beneficiaries from scholarship and mentoring programme Udayan Shalini. Each beneficiary has to contribute 50 hours of volunteering. The involvement through such initiatives has meant instances when one beneficiary has sponsored books for the other. This we proudly call our Beneficiary Network, which adds up to the work that Udayan Care is doing.

How do you think NGO credibility can be increased ?

This can be done by following proper financial management systems. At Udayan Care now we have documented all accounting processes which are centrally looked after and audited by a qualified CA. On the programmatic side also there need to be checks and balances. Monthly to quarterly monitoring, generation of MIS to keep tab would also help in the direction. It is also good to display transparency by making available your annual report to stake holder scrutiny.

What are views on NGO governance ?

NGOs have almost everybody and anybody as a stake holder, hence a greater need for NGO governance. A proper board that meets regularly, all documentation in place and as mentioned above checks, both on the financial management and programmatic side. A highly empowered core team in place should also be made must for NGOs.

What is Udayan Care's contribution to advocacy on the issue ?

Udayan Care is an active member of the Quality Institutional Care and Alternative Care (QIC & AC) initiative of CRY and Samarth. With other members of the network we inputted towards formulation of the draft Delhi Declaration on the issue. Udayan Care is also inputting in the Foster Parenting Bill being drawn by the network. We are also part of the Human Rights Law Network on Child Sexual Abuse, which is working on a bill on the issue to be proposed to the Delhi Government. Udayan Care was also instrumental in organising Abilympics, Olympics for the differently abled.

What is the model of operations that you follow ?
How do you prevent being over-burdened by logistics of running such an effort ?

The children are brought to our homes by a combination of sources like Child Line, other NGOs and direct approach. These are the children who have run-away from their homes and are on the streets, bus and railway stations.

Once the children come to us they are provided preliminary care. Within 10 days, they are interviewed and produced before (CWC) Child Welfare Committee. The committee gives permission for their stay at our homes for a period varying from 6 weeks to 6 months. During this period an effort is made to restore them to their families. If this is not possible then on further recommendations of CWC they stay with us. At times restoration happens after 2-4 years of their stay with us.

In order to prevent over burden, Udayan Care has followed the corporate principle of franchising. We look for suitable Mentor Mothers and 2-3 Mentors. Once we are able to mobilize them a home is started. The mentor mothers and mentors handle the entire functioning of the home. All the mentor mothers have so far contributed funds from their own sources to facilitate the activities. The central office of Udayan Care provides support to them in terms of policy and procedural guidelines, handling accounting and financial management, provision of mental health experts and social workers amongst other resources.

What are you doing to ensure self-sustainability of the organisation ?

So far, we have been raising resources through individual donations from amongst friends and family, sales of greeting cards and organisation of events. Infact, our latest event involving making of work of arts by eminent artists, school children and their teachers was very well received. We have also received funds from the Japanese Embassy and American support groups like St. Letter Day's Charity, Home of Hope and Wings of Support. We have also been able to raise funds from organisations like Indian Oil, MTNL, Rites, Bharti Group and others. Most of our present fund-raising has been through volunteers and trustees, although we are in the process of setting up our own fund raising division.

What are your expansion plans for the coming few years ?

The immediate plans are starting of the 2 new homes in North and West Delhi. Then the plan is to intensify our reach in the states of Haryana and UP, where we have one home each. We aim to increase the number of beneficiaries under our Udayan Shalini programme from 300 to 12000 in next 5 years, which is although highly dependent on the success of our self-fund raising programme.

We have also initiated few institutional building efforts like documentation of Udayan Care's journey so and it's model of operation; development of HR manual and policies; MIS system for Udayan Shalini Fellows; standard and documented accounting procedures and a succession planning programme for each function. We also foresee a strong research division at Udayan Care that besides conducting studies on various relevant issues would also produce replicable models.