Brief Introduction to CWIN

CWIN-Nepal addresses all the critical child rights and child protection issues that include child labour exploitation, abandonment and neglect, sexual exploitation, lack of access to quality education and training, lack of access to quality healthcare, including mental healthcare; trafficking and online child abuse. CWIN-Nepal carries out mass awareness on child rights, conducts policy advocacy towards making government institutions more responsive and accountable to Nepal’s children for the realisation of their rights and overall development.

CWIN-Nepal builds partnerships with children and their associations, national alliances, international agencies and movements, government agencies and the private sector to bring the issue of child rights into a national agenda. It has a legacy of ensuring children’s direct participation in national and international policies and issues concerning their rights including giving inputs to the new constitution of Nepal. CWIN- Nepal has been facilitating the National Adolescent Girls Network and National Adolescent Boys Network which has members from all the 77 districts of Nepal’s seven provinces. Likewise, CWIN empowers and mobilises adolescents and young people to become Peer Educators, Facilitators or Social Mobilisers for peer support. During the Covid-19 Pandemic, it has oriented young people on online safety and mobilised 1500 adolescents on the online platform to provide emotional and psycho-social support, who have successfully reached out to 70,000 young people around the country.

CWIN has been also undertaking a number of pioneering child development and protection services including the Child Helpline 1098, transit centres, self-reliance, and empowerment of children. CWIN has led the ‘Children as Zones of Peace’ campaign and reached out to more than 50,000 children directly with child protection and humanitarian assistance work during the decade long armed conflict period in Nepal from 1996-2006. CWIN has championed child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health issues in 2015 by initiating Nepal’s first and only Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit at the Kanti Children’s Hospital, the only national children’s hospital in Nepal. Together with Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists, Clinical Psychologists and Counsellors trained on child mental health, it has proudly reached out to more than 200,000 children and adolescents through the OPD service, online consultation support, first child mental health toll-free hotline number and child mental health outreach camps. CWIN has now constructed a separate facility for Child Psychiatry and Mental health and will be starting Nepal’s first in-patient service for children. After the Covid-19 pandemic, CWIN has been able to reach out to 170,000 children and their families with emergency good support, medical support, hygiene kits for adolescents and mental health support. Furthermore, CWIN reached out to 315000 people with humanitarian assistance during the disastrous earthquake of 2015. CWIN also ventured into uncharted territory by undertaking reconstruction work necessitated by the devastating earthquake of 2015; most notably, the construction of 22 schools in Dolakha.

CWIN has carried out and published research on various children’s issues including child labour, children in armed conflict, sexual exploitation of children, child mental health and online sexual abuse and exploitation, etc. CWIN is the first organization in Nepal to initiate research, campaign and advocacy on sexual exploitation of children and online child protection.

Furthermore, CWIN pioneered in the direct work with street-connected children for their dignity, empowerment and social reintegration and continues the work with the engagement of former street-connected children as peer educators. During the pandemic and lockdown, CWIN provided direct support to more than 500 street-connected children and young people with emergency food support, medical care, supplies of sanitary utilities and after lobbying with the local government offices facilitated in vaccination of street-connected youth who do not have identity cards or citizenship cards. CWIN is also actively engaged with Nepali civil society groups to voice for the right of children at risk to have birth certificates and citizenship cards.

CWIN has a track record of successful evidence-based advocacy on various child rights issues including the educational rights of children. It has extensive experience of working directly with schools for uplifting school performances, good governance, promoting schools as zones of peace and public ownership in school management and school reconstruction. It has been continually providing technical expertise to various agencies of the Government of Nepal (GON) to formulate policies and directives such as National Plan of Action for Holistic Development of Children and Adolescent Girls, 2013; National Policy on Adolescents Development and Regulations for the Government Declaration of Schools as Zones of Peace. It has also been providing technical support to the GoN to formulate and implement various policies and programs to promote public education, child mental health, child participation etc. It has helped to establish a national child protection mechanism such as the Child Helpline Nepal 1098. Furthermore, it has conducted and published hundreds of researches and studies on the different thematic areas. CWIN has initiated the National Campaign for Education and many other CSO networks. CWIN’s existing dynamic working relations with policymakers, local authorities, government agencies and civil society organisations (CSOs) will further enhance the capacities of target groups and final beneficiaries of the Action. CWIN’s experience of advocacy and alliance building at the international level including participation in the UNGASS on Children/Drug/ SDG Forum, Alliance 8,7; civil society engagement in Universal Periodical Reporting (UPR), CEDAW, Beijing Platform for Action will provide an international perspective to the Action for its successful completion.

With a transformed federal system, CWIN has established its presence in all the seven provinces of Nepal through the Child Helpline Nepal 1098, which is the single comprehensive child protection mechanism in Nepal, which it runs in collaboration with the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens and the Nepal Telecom Authority. It runs direct interventions for minimisation of all forms of abuse and exploitation, sexual exploitation including online harms, reducing child labour exploitation, socialisation and empowerment of street-connected children and other children in distress. CWIN also runs CWIN Balika Peace Home and CWIN Boy’s Transit Home for emergency transit shelter, empowerment and sustainable social reintegration of children at risk.

It has fostered trust and a dynamic relation with both federal and provincial governments, CSOs and their networks and is also the founder and member of many networks on child rights and child protection such as the National Campaign for Education (NCE), Children as Zones of Peace and Protection (CZOPP), Alliance Against Trafficking in Women and Children (AATWIN), Consortium of Organisations Working with Child Participation, National Alliance of Organisations working with Street Children (NAOSC), National Alliance Coordinating Group(NACG-SAIEVAC). Most of these national alliances and networks were initiated by CWIN. It is also a member of a wide range of international initiatives and networks such as ECPAT International, Global March, Global Campaign for Education (GCE), CRC-Asia, Girls Not Brides, Child Helpline International, Aflatoun, Consortium for Street Children (CSC), Men Engage Alliance, etc.

CWIN-Nepal is leading the national alcohol policy in Nepal and is a national coordinator for Nepal Alcohol Policy Advocacy (NAPA). It is a member of the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (GAPA), WFAD (World Federation Against Drugs), and Drugs Policy Futures and has participated in UNGASS on drugs policy and WHO alcohol prevention workshops. CWIN-Nepal has integrated alcohol, tobacco and drugs as a development issue in its programmes of action in the communities and its direct work with children and young people.

Every year, CWIN-Nepal reaches out to at least 100,000 children and young people through various projects and interventions. It provides direct support to 20,000 children from vulnerable situations for their protection, mental health support, legal support, education support, vocational training and family reunion and social reintegration.

CWIN KEY OBJECTIVES

  • As the country undergoes a major political and administrative restructuring, CWIN will have to undergo a corresponding internal reorganization in order to retain its level of influence and efficacy at different tiers of the new structure.  As more decisions get made at provincial rather than national levels, CWIN’s current role as a national NGO must be supplemented by a presence and capacity to advocate at the provincial capitals.  Consequently, this period will be one in which CWIN has to have two sets of specific objectives, one internal and organizational, and the second, external and programmatic.
  • Specific programmatic objectives:
  • 1. In this programme period, CWIN will carry out Advocacy through Action to bring progressive policies and laws related to children, matching the spirit of the new Constitution of Nepal, and encourage commitment towards children’s rights among duty bearers, communities and the state, and in particular, by 2020:
  • A. lobby for the endorsement of child friendly local governance and establishment of Child Protection Committees in all provinces at the earliest, providing capacity building support to the provincial governments as required.
  • B. lobby so that the necessary amendments to the existing Children’s Act to ensure Child Rights and Protection are introduced for discussion at the earliest in the new federal lawmaking body (equivalent to the Parliament), and passed, to ensure alignment with the protections in the new Constitution.
  • C. lobby for endorsement of the National Alcohol Policy by the new federal lawmaking body (equivalent to the Parliament) by converting it into a National Act at the earliest.
  • D. promote the National School Child Protection Policy for increased acceptance and compliance in all provinces. CWIN will work towards ensuring that 10 percent of the schools in 10 districts where CWIN is working endorse and implement the policy by 2020.
  • E. advocate for inclusion of children’s issues in the policies and development plans including in the national and provincial planning documents.
  • 2. CWIN will strengthen Child Helpline Nepal 1098 in the six provinces where it currently functions as implementing organization, and establish a new Child Helpline unit in the seventh province [province no. 2] to directly support 9000 children in need of care and protection of children in need, work for gatekeeping to avoid institutionalization of children over a three year period, and educate and create 350,000 adult advocates and allies among the general public during this period..
  • 3. CWIN will strengthen capacities and partnerships with our constituencies – children, adolescent girls and young people – for increasing their influence at policy and programmatic levels for protection of children from all forms of violence including commercial sexual exploitation, child marriage, trafficking and child labour exploitation. Ministries, government departments, local governments and/or Child Protection Committees will invite child representatives for consultations at least 5 times a year or 15 times over the three-year period.
  • 4. CWIN will generate public awareness and enrich understanding of children’s issues and their rights through media and communications (Bal Sarokar TV and Bal Chautari Radio and Bal Sarokar Online Magazine by developing 10 new programmes, tracking TRPs and site visit data to understand reach. CWIN will ensure that its Digital Resource Centre expands its reach so that content is available for use to the general public by 2020.
  • 5. CWIN will carry out seven baseline studies and three action-research studies by 2020, including a new situation analysis of children at risk in the urban areas of the Kathmandu valley, and a qualitative study of the coping strategies of street children and youth in the context of the new guidelines for working with street children introduced by the Central Child Welfare Board to understand the impact of these guidelines on the relevant constituencies.
  • 6. CWIN will promote inclusion of children’s rights within broader social movements and development processes at national and international levels through strengthened networking and expressions of solidarity, in particular, through actions such as increasing opportunities for interaction between the Kishori Samuhas and the Women’s movement, providing capacity building support to the travel and tourism industry, minimizing child marriage in working districts and reach inputs from ECPAT International to children’s organizations on new threats in trafficking and online commercial sexual exploitation.
  • 7. CWIN will strengthen CWIN Balika programme and establish a residential Self-Reliance Centre for girls and young women to provide opportunities for them to learn vocational training for self-reliance by 2020.
  • 8. CWIN will work towards strengthening capacities of the government schools in the Kathmandu Valley and provide educational support to at least 20,000 children in need in the urban poor areas and in rural areas by 2020.
  • 9. CWIN will continue its presence in the community through the Women and Children Empowerment and Livelihood Programme (WOCELIP) in partnership with Rural Development Tuki Association for community concientisation and empowerment of the women and the community for dignified livelihood in Dolakha district by reaching out to 7400 households in 8 VDCs in the northern belt.
  • 10. CWIN will strengthen child mental health services in Nepal through completing the building for the first Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit in Kanti Children’s.

Executive Board

Mr. Madhav Pradhan

Chairperson

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Ms. Sumitra Joshi

Vice Chairman

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Mr. Subodh Chandra Shrestha

Treasurer

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Mr. Tanka Limbu

Secretary

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Prof. Dr. Govind Subedi

Member

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Ms. Vasha Shrestha

Member

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Ms. Sireen Tamrakar

Member

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