Parivaar is West Bengal’s largest free residential educational institution for children from highly impoverished backgrounds. As of January’24 it has more than 2100 resident children ( more than 1000 in boys and girls campus each). The children are from age-group of 4 (pre-schooling) till 21 (University level graduation).
Our Approach:
Parivaar means “Family.” At Parivaar, we believe each child is a unique and special addition to our ever-growing family. Our approach to care and development is holistic: a combination of love, community, responsibility, education, service and fun. The kids at Parivaar are not treated as charity or as clients, just as the care-givers and teachers are not treated as employees. Everyone is part of the Parivaar family. When we invest in the life of a child at Parivaar, we are investing in her future, her family’s future, and the future of India.
How Do Children Come to Parivaar?
Generally, children admitted into Parivaar are orphans, street kids, children with critically-ill parents and no other family support, and children from other vulnerable backgrounds, including single-parent households, kids from areas where exploitation and victimization, especially of girls, is common, and kids from highly impoverished rural and tribal areas where starvation and malnutrition are rampant, and where daily income per family is less than Rs 150. All these children — though from diverse backgrounds — have the common characteristic that their destinies can be changed with access to clean and safe living and through education. If these children are nurtured in a residential setting where their basic needs are met, they can focus on the new future possible to them with structured learning leading to university-level education.
Parivaar helps children achieve the goals they set for themselves. We support them in choosing a career for which they have interest and aptitude, and help them pursue a degree to make that career a reality. Some of our earliest residents have now moved into careers in engineering, nursing, and accountancy, just to name a few.
Parivaar receives approximately 2000 cases of vulnerable children a year by field organizations, relatives of the child in question, or through concerned non-family members. After filtering Prima Facie information, cases for site visits and detailed investigations are short-listed. Parivaar has a special team that conducts site inquiries from where the case-request has come. This team visits the child’s location and collects a detailed profile, facts and information on him based on the interaction with his referring persons/entity and other possible sources. This site report is then discussed and deliberated, and the severity of the need of the child to be admitted to Parivaar is assessed and a decision is made. The important parameters looked into while admitting into Parivaar are:
At entry level Parivaar admits kids between 4 and 10 years of age, though certain exceptions are made.
The child should want and be able to stay at Parivaar through university enrollment. Just as in any family, we believe children should be supported by their family – in this case Parivaar – until they are self-sufficient.
Generally, along with one child all his/her siblings are also admitted into Parivaar. We believe it does not make sense to develop a bright future for one and leave others to languish behind. Parivaar’s principle is that all siblings should progress together so that their familial bonding remains intact into the future.
