Across the world there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of children that sleep alone on the streets every night. In India, every five minutes a child arrives alone at a railway station. Immediately they face violence, exploitation, trafficking & abuse. Scavenging for scraps of food, they are beaten, attacked, raped and even killed. Reaching out to these children as early as possible while they are on a moving train or after they arrive at a railway station is important for their protection and rehabilitation, preventing them from slipping into street life.

For 25 years, Railway Children India (RCI) has been working in and around railway stations for long-term change for India's street children, both at the micro and macro level to prevent and intervene on child rights and protection in India. From direct intervention and preventive child protection in and around railway stations and communities, crisis response in the most vulnerable communities, research and advocacy work at the district, state and national level, catalysing and leveraging existing child protection systems and mechanisms and building the capacity of allied partners and stakeholders, to building and pushing discourse on child rights and protection in India, our work is focused on creating a safe ecosystem for children across spaces and sectors.

To maximise this safety and protection net we work with children, families, government, civil society organizations and other stakeholders at and around 8 railway stations across 6 states in India, protecting around 3,000 children every year of which 90% are successfully reunified with their families. Our work extends to training and sensitizing more than 3,000 railway employees every year on child protection so they can be the eyes and ears forming a child safety network.

Till date, we have protected more than 100000 children and we will not stop being there for them until ‘no child ever has to live on the streets.

• Building and sustaining child-friendly railway stations and networks –RCI has worked across 40 stations in the past 25 years, reaching and protecting more than 100000 children through Child help desks, trained social workers and trained railway officials to ensure no child slips through the cracks and takes to a life on the street. Passengers and bystanders are engaged too.
• Strengthening families for child protection: Families and communities form the first circle of protection for their children. We work to strengthen the capacities of families, preventing children from leaving home. We have strengthened 6000 families through ration kits, counselling, linkage to schemes, and vocational training amongst other support in the last 5 years.
• Working in collaboration, converging for child rights: We collaborate with governments, sector experts and key stakeholders to develop and strengthen child protection systems and mechanisms, and create awareness amongst individual stakeholders. Railway Children India is the resource agency for the Indian Railways, having trained 43500 railway officials in the last 5 years.
• Children at the centre of every decision – Children are humans and have the same rights as us all. If the youngest cohort of the world’s population is violated, abused and exploited, we will never see any headway in the world. That’s why we put child rights at the centre of every decision we make and the programmes we build.

Railway Children India is actively implementing multiple CSR Projects for Corporate, Trusts andFoundations in the states of Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, & TamilNadu. Railway Children India is creating an impressive impact in the area of Child Protection andChild Welfare.

We work extensively in creating Child-Friendly Railway Stations and transport terminuses. We are aresource agency for Indian Railways to train Rail Staff on Child Protection and Safeguarding.

1. Legal Status: RCI is a section 8 not-for-profit company registered in the year 2013. We are fully compliant with all CSR requirements like CSR1, FCRA and 12A.

2. Project Design & Implementation: Our projects are designed on need base analysis and involves all government stakeholder and ensure participation from both internal & external stakeholders. Projects get delivered on time with all milestone deliveries and impact creation.RCI also ensure post-delivery monitoring and evaluation to ensure the project objectives are met.

3. Project Reporting & Financial Reporting: RCI ensured timely reporting with quarterly updates on milestone achievements. We strongly believe in the transparent delivery of projects and comply with regular financial reporting and utilization reports.

4. Governance: The project gets regular monitoring by the senior team and the chief executive which ensure excellent governance and quality of project delivery. We adhere to weekly, monthly and quarterly review of our work to maximum efficiency and quality delivery of projects.

5. Scalability and Sustainability: Our work model is tested and can be easily scaled in terms of duration and regions. We work closely with government stakeholders.

6. Impact and Visibility: Our Impact in the last 5 years have been extensive. We have been able to create following impact in the last 5 years:

• Children Protected at the Railway Stations:22500
• Children Reunited with Families:20250
• Railway Officials Trained on Child Safeguarding:44200
• Railway Passengers sensitized of Child Safeguarding:265000

The partner visibility is ensured in all communications, posters and collaterals. Logo of partners are used on Child Help Desk.

7. Employee Volunteering: We have a very robust employee volunteering module to engage employees in Monthly/Quarterly social activities during the project implementation.