Send a child home

1. Children leaving homes are extremely vulnerable— the longer a child or adolescent is missing, the greater the risk they face. Railway Children India (RCI) believes that ‘children leaving homes or situations of abuse, violence, and poverty use India's extensive railway network to get to the cities, where they hope to find a better life.

2. Every 5 minutes, a child arrives alone at a railway station in India. The survey conducted by RCI in 2015 indicates that 121,860 children are arriving at and around 32 stations across all 16 Railway Zones every year”. These children constantly face all sorts of risks, even death, while living at and around a railway station

3. Analysis of data of CWCs (2009 -2014) in Delhi, 2015 found that out of 29281 children, 13 % of children arrived from Uttar Pradesh. Often children traveling from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh by trains to Delhi pass through/halt at Ghaziabad. Ghaziabad junction is also being used by traffickers as an entry point to Delhi. Hence, Ghaziabad should be an important point of outreach as almost all the trains to Delhi halt at Ghaziabad railway station.

Recognizing the severity of the issue, Railway Children India (RCI) has started working at Ghaziabad Railway station in January 2018. Through this intervention, a 24 *7 outreach is done, where the children who are alone and are at risk are identified within 25 minutes of their reaching the station and brought under the safety net. From January 2018 to December 2018, we have protected 546 children, out of which, 336 children were supported through the open shelter. Over the next five years, we aim to project 2160 more such children and sustainably restore them back eight to their families or long care homes.

- To reach out to 2160 children arriving alone and at-risk at and around Ghaziabad railway station and sustainably rehabilitate 1728 children either to their families (70%) or long care homes (10%) by 2020.

- To provide need-based counseling, support for de-addiction (2% of the protected children), and re-enroll them back into schools (25% of the restored children).

- To follow up with rehabilitated children to see that the conditions that were responsible for children leaving home do not occur again, implies family strengthening programs.