Cause and the Mission: Education and long-term overall development of young children from destitute and vulnerable backgrounds.

Profile:

Parivaar is a humanitarian service organization, based at 24 Parganas (S), West Bengal, and, at present, is chiefly working for total care and overall development of orphans, girls highly vulnerable to exploitation, victimization, and trafficking and extremely impoverished children from tribal areas from 11 districts of West Bengal and Jharkhand.

Starting from scratch and thereafter developed brick by brick, Parivaar Ashram is being continuously developed and molded into a unique institution transforming the lives of each of its residential members (children and adults) and acting as a training ground of highly dedicated life-committed grassroots workers. As of December 1st 2012, there are 735 resident children at Parivaar. At the Parivaar campus is also located Parivaar's own Formal School 'Amar Bharat Vidyapeeth where the resident children of Parivaar study.

Parivaar is one of the largest free residential institutions for children from destitute backgrounds in Eastern India, and is seen as a model institution in the field of child caretaking and overall development.

It is the recipient of the National Child Welfare Award 2011 presented by the Honorary President of India, which is the highest recognition given by the Government of India to any organization working in the field of child welfare.

Parivaar's institutions:

A. Parivaar Ashram Boys' Residential Institution (having 490 resident boys)
B. Parivaar Sarada Teertha Girls' Residential Institution (having 245 resident     girls)
C. Parivaar Bonogram Centre
D. Parivaar Nivedita House
E. Amar Bharat Vidyapeeth (English medium Formal High School affiliated to     West Bengal Board of Education)

In all, Parivaar institutions are spread over 20 acres (60 bighas) of land.

The Beginning

Parivaar was started by Vinayak Lohani, who, inspired by spiritual and humanistic ideals of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, decided to devote his entire life to serving the 'Divinity of Man' as taught by Swami Vivekananda. He did his B.Tech at IIT Kharagpur, worked at Infosys (2000-01), and then did his MBA from IIM Calcutta (2001-03). Immediately after graduating from IIM in 2003, with just 3 children in a small rented building and almost no financial resources, Vinayak started Parivaar. Till he had 15 children at Parivaar, he used to give some lectures for students appearing for Management entrance examinations and through that could meet the expenses for this tiny household. Gradually people began to be inspired by this dedicated service and started to support the initiative and the number of children at Parivaar grew. At the end of 2004, Parivaar could purchase its own land to develop its permanent campus called Parivaar Ashram. Parivaar's mission and theme began to attract dedicated youth, many of whom joined Parivaar Ashram as resident workers and began to become bearers of this mission.
Vinayak lives with his huge family of children and fellow-Sevavratees at Parivaar Ashram.
At Class 10 State Board examinations, Parivaar has had 100% pass rate in all of its batches. There have been students scoring as high as 85%. These students did not have any exposure to any kind of education till the age of 9 or 10, and after a fast-learning bridging course they were admitted straight to the 4th or 5th grade. They are now being trained for engineering and medical entrance examinations and have been enrolled with some leading coaching institutes for the same.

Having developed fine processes in residential caretaking and overall development of children with impoverished backgrounds and vulnerability, Parivaar is now endeavoring to move on a faster scaled trajectory. In the 24-month phase July 2012- June 2014 Parivaar is aiming to scale up to a level of 1200 resident children (from the present level of 735 children) and the infrastructure development for the same.

Other Initiatives

Vinayak Lohani has also used competencies of Parivaar in mentoring a large number of organizations in different parts of India, and has helped many of these organizations to reach a certain maturity level through the collaborative platform of donors, volunteers, and service-delivery grassroots NGOs called 'Caring Friends,' ( www.caringfriends.in ) of which he has been an integral part.

Many academic case-studies have been authored on Vinayak and Parivaar, dealing with grassroots Social Entrepreneurship and Organization-building. These cases have been taught and discussed at various B- Schools in India. Best-selling author Rashmi Bansal's book 'I have a Dream' has an entire chapter on Vinayak Lohani and the initial phase of Parivaar.

In 2011, Government of India's Ministry of Women and Child Development invited him to the membership of the Ministry's Task Force to review past Government schemes and formulate new ones, and he is one of the very few persons from the Non-Governmental / civil society sector from the entire country to be inducted into it.

Village Service Activities

i. Education Excellence Program for village students has been started for 1500 meritorious students from the Bakhrahat area in the 10 Km radius of the Parivaar Ashram. These students are provided books and stationery material, and ensured that they do not drop out in their education. This will scale up considerably as a separat project, benefiting hundreds of other students from villages.

ii. Welfare work of medical help, emergency pecuniary help and organizing sports events for village youth has continued. Hepatitis-B Vaccination Camps have been organized in which 800 people from villages have taken Hepatitis B vaccination in 3 rounds (each after a monthly interval). In fact, Parivaar is like a guardian to its neighboring villages, as anyone who is in any kind of crises knows that Seva-vratees at Parivaar are always there to do whatever they can, ever-ready to serve.

iii. Ambulance Service for villages: Parivaar has started a 24-hour Ambulance service for the population in the adjoining rural areas. Since there were no hospitals in the nearby area, all patients in critical condition had to be taken to hospitals in Kolkata. General village populations used to face enormous hardship in taking the patients to hospitals in the city at odd hours with no means of public or private transport available at such times. Now they can -due to Parivaar's Ambulance services.

iv. Monthly Foodstock Scheme for old and ailing villagers: In the Panchayat area and adjoining Panchayats, 700 old and ailing people are under the Monthly Foodstock Scheme, meaning they receive a stipulated quantity of rice, dal (lentils), oil.and other foods required for the month, and medical help when required. These people are not in a position to fend for themselves, nor do they have any family support. A large number of them are old widows.

Field-base in tribal areas

Parivaar is the hub of training of Seva-vratees, and also the base for many other projects serving the rural areas in the 24 Parganas district as well as far-off tribal areas in districts of Midnapore (West), Bankura, and Purulia in West Bengal and Singhbhum (East) in Jharkhand. These areas are home to some of the most impoverished tribes of the country. The whole population suffers from malnutrition and, generation after generation, people in this belt live a life totally unlit by the lamp of education and in thoroughly sub- human conditions.

Two main tribes, Sabar and Birhore, are the main beneficiaries of Parivaar's tribal service programs. More than 300 children from these tribal areas have also been admitted to the Parivaar Ashram Residential Institution. 500 more children shall be admitted from these areas over the next 2 years. In more than 50 villages (some of which have severe law and order problems) Parivaar has field volunteers and contact people.

In the last Financial Year, Parivaar raised and spent approximately $ 1,600,000 (about Rs. 8 Crores) on its various projects as well as infrastructure-development for expansion. Out of this, more than 80% is through donations from individuals.

Awards and Honours

• National Award for Child Welfare 2011 presented by the Hon. President of    India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

• Sanskriti Award 2011, country's premier award for young achievers in    2011 from the Former President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

• CNN-IBN's 'Young Indian Leader of the Year Award' for 2012.

• IIM Calcutta's 'Distinguished Alumnus Award' (one of the 9 recipients    selected out of 8000 alumni of the institute in last 50 years)

• 'Spirit of Mastek Award' conferred by IT Company Mastek Corporation .

• 'Karmaveer Puraskar' 2011 presented by International Confederation of    NGOs

• 'Transforming India through Transforming Indians' felicitation from    Chinmaya Mission Kolkata

• Rotary Club of Calcutta Megacity Vocational Excellence Award.

For more details about Parivaar Education Society and its projects, please Click here.