Our Aims and Objectives
 
The following are the Aims and Objectives of this organization :

  To identify the poor and needy and minister to their needs.
  To promote Child Focused Community Development Projects in rural and tribal areas with multipurpose
  programmes for self-sustenance.
  To reach out to children at high risk like, street and working children, HIV/AIDS affected and infected,
  victims of abuse, violence, exploitation, riots, child labour, the oppressed, the differently abled.
 
To promote relief and rehabilitation to disasters and natural calamity affected.
 
To awaken, organize and enable children, their families and communities towards holistic self-development
  and self-reliance.
  To promote awareness about the rights and needs of the children and youths, particularly adolescent girls.

Our History
 
Forty-two years ago this journey started in response to the biblical call, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me". Kindernothilfe e. V., Germany began to support children in North India and the objective was to reach out to disadvantaged children for a better future. But then the question was whether Kindernothilfe should support with piece-meal largesse or whether it should partner Churches. For a while Kindernothilfe worked in its own way but eventually felt the calling that a partnership with Churches would not only be more effective but more widespread in its impact. Therefore, thirty years ago, a special ministry called Church of North India Council for Child Care (CNI-CCC) was created under the Church of North India. In reality it meant that the Churches recognized the importance of serving children and that they needed to make a significant investment in time, finances, resources and manpower to realize the mission of reaching out to the downtrodden and poor. The focus of such an outreach was basically on support to Residential Child care and Day care programmes.

 
But over the twenty long years change had begun to write its indelible script on the face of Indian time. Poverty was assuming new features and complexions. Hundreds of children from semi-urban, rural and tribal areas began to find themselves on the streets and consequently exploited and abused. Young innocent girls suffered sexual victimization from the emerging multinationals and the liberalization from sexual inhibitions, especially with large-scale migrations to urban area in search of survival. Children living in abject poverty in far-flung rural and tribal areas remained untouched by the compassion of Christ.

The impact of the changing scenario posed serious questions for the Church. Had its mission out-lived its utility? Did it need to indulge! in a serious consideration of the scope of its work to be relevant to the times? If it did, what aspects would need alteration?Would it even be necessary to change the Constitution to be compatible with changing times? The speed of change and the need to make the service to children truly meaningful and relevant left no choice for retrograde thought. Change meant flexibility and relevance; that is, the Church at all times in future would have to rediscover and rejuvenate itself time and again to be of significance in the lives of the needy. Innovative programmes would be the order of the day and the last and the least would have to be touched in different ways by the gospel of love.
The Church of North India very magnanimously allowed the CNI-CCC to dissolve itself and rise again like the phoenix, renewed in form and spirit. A new Constitution was drawn up with the concept of the ministry to children not being the honored possession of anyone Church but rather a prized, heritage in which all are equal participants in making decisions and addressing the contemporary new forms of poverty by inspiring, strengthening and challenging each other to accept differences, overcome indifferences, and in the differentials to set an example of their Oneness in Christ.
  

This new ecumenical body, armed with a new structural base, came to birth in 1994 and was named "Holistic Child Development India" focusing on the holistic development of children, their families and communities irrespective of caste and religion. It initiated the step of weaning away the- then Church mind-set from its cocoon-security into the interiors of a new emerging India for which novel approaches and innovative programmes would have to be conceived and implemented.

Today, we have been on this ecumenical path for ten years and the journey has been exhilarating. The obvious and hidden challenges have been exciting and inspiring. In our effort to meet them, we have found ourselves in a vast network of encouragement and support. We have met marvelous people with brilliant ideas, compassionate hearts and burning desires for change. We have been blessed by smiles where they were never imagined. We have heard the shackles of oppression and suppression clanging to the floor and releasing whole communities for a life of freedom and self-sustenance. We have heard hundreds of expressions of gratitude from the dump-yards, dark alleys of cities, roadside shacks and slums and the lonely heart in a school hostel. We have known the relief and joy of a mother as her girl child moved away from the squalor of the red-light area to where the air is pure, the grass green and love abounds aplenty. We have experienced the satisfaction of giving care and relief to the calamity-affected in Orissa, Gujarat are Melghat more especially to those facing ostracism or death from HIV / AIDS.
   
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