Organisation:
Where Are India’s Children
Location:
Pan-India
Problem:
UNICEF pegs India’s orphaned and abandoned children at 30 million. Children in India’s shelters range from 0.3 to 0.5 million, yet the number of children nationally in the legal adoption pool at any point is barely 2000. Once vulnerable children reach the child shelters, their movement through the child protection mechanism to reach a positive outcome (including the legal adoption pool) is not guaranteed.
The child protection mechanism across 700+ districts in India is a complex and distributed system with excessive dependence on manual processes and human diligence, which can result in children falling through the cracks and languishing in shelters, instead of getting a chance to reach their forever family.
Solution:
There are 5 key innovative elements of our proposed technology solution:
1) Make every child visible.
2) Ensure complete and valid data.
3) Use algorithms to flag eligible children for the next step.
4) Dynamically assist the local authorities in decision making.
5) Real-time dashboards and reports.
Scalability and Impact:
From July 2019 to January 2020, we conducted a study of child shelters in the Pune district to deeply understand various processes and issues, and have produced a report on systemic gaps and corresponding technology recommendations to plug those gaps. These recommendations form the basis of our product, Child Lifecycle Management Solution. Our next step is to build and deploy the product in one or more districts of Maharashtra (and other States) as a pilot. We currently commit WCD Pune to discuss the pilot with MahaIT (Maharashtra’s IT department).
Financial Requirements:
Yes
Awards and Recognition:
None