CHINAR International is a social impact organization, working in J&K since 2011 with the mission of empowering vulnerable children, marginalized youth & distressed communities through quality education & socioeconomic programs using a scientific approach. Between 2004 and 2011, CHINAR successfully ran a pilot project called CHINAR Home (a home for 20 orphan boys and girls) in Kashmir India, in partnership with a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). CHINAR supported the local NGO in Kashmir both programmatically and financially during this time. The partnership also successfully conducted remote sponsorship of vulnerable children and disaster relief activity after the earthquake of 2005 in Kashmir which included rehabilitation of a border village in Uri district. In 2011, after a thorough organizational review and pilot project assessment, CHINAR made major changes to its strategy with the goal of delivering high impact, sustainable, innovative and scalable solutions to the most pressing social problems related to orphans, vulnerable children and marginalized youth. In addition to revising its programs, CHINAR also revamped its overall management including remote governance, operations, monitoring and oversight. After the organizational review, CHINAR concluded its partnership with the local NGO in Kashmir and launched new chapter organizations in Srinagar and Delhi in India to execute on the new strategy. CHINAR now has offices in Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir) and New Delhi in India and Reston, Virginia in the USA. The new strategy includes:
Support for marginalized youth
Holistic community based approach to rehabilitate and empower orphans & vulnerable children without displacing the children. This is accomplished through the following programs:
Quality education and nurturing environment for children
Livelihood support for guardians of such children
Skill development and jump-start capital to start to help marginalized youth start a business. CHINAR's programmatic interventions have a clear exit strategy and ensure sustainability after the project is over. The bottom line is, if a vulnerable child can't get education because of poverty, CHINAR can help. The idea is to provide such children with a wholesome environment at home, at school and in the community, so that the children can blossom and reach their full potential. In an institutionalized care model, an orphan or vulnerable child is brought into a well-conditioned and controlled environment. CHINAR, on the other hand, use a holistic approach to create a healthy and nurturing environment for vulnerable children without displacing them. At home, CHINAR ensures that vulnerable children get all the basic necessities so that they can attend school and receive a quality education. CHINAR also helps the guardians of such children with interest-free microfinance livelihood support called Community Finance. This enables the guardians to receive stable income, become good role models and mentors to their children, and raise their families in a nurturing way. The goal is to make the families self-reliant and the program sustainable within 5 years. To improve the quality of education in school, CHINAR has developed a comprehensive strategy that involves remedial education, teacher workshops, community mobilization, and teacher motivation and incentivization.Community environment improvements are planned by providing counseling and guidance to community members. All of CHINAR's programs have a very strong counseling, monitoring and oversight component. Financially, this approach is very attractive as well. Using this strategy, the lifetime cost of supporting a child is around 15-20% of that of a child raised in an orphanage. This community-based holistic strategy qualified for the semi-finals of the Echoing Green Fellowship 2012 program for bold innovative solutions of social problems. CHINAR made it to the top 10% of the 3500 worldwide applications. http://www.echoinggreen.org/blog/2012-semifinalists
