CINI is a leading Indian NGO established in 1974, working across 8 states in the eastern region of India that has adopted a human rights-based to programming with children and adolescents to foster human and social development. The organisation was founded by Dr. Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician with other professionals from different disciplines. Over nearly five decades, CINI has engaged in participatory, convergent and preventive rights-based programming for children in the areas of health, nutrition, education and protection reaching out to 7 million people.

CINI works across the spectrum of children’s rights as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC 1989) aiming at achieving survival, development, protection and participation by all children, with a special focus on the most vulnerable.

Participation of children and the wider community for us is integral to enabling young people become partners and proactive citizens in development processes concerning them and their communities. We aim to strengthen local governance processes for inclusive rights-based development. At the community level, we are facilitators creating partnerships among core duty-bearers, namely, parents (and, by extension, families and communities), service providers and local government institutions.

We follow ‘The CINI Method’ a human rights-based approach to programming for and with children and adolescents designed to translate children’s rights into development practice. It is a programmatic model designed on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.

The CINI Method offers a framework to integrate community-based practice with systems strengthening aimed at 

• Building Child Friendly Communities by engaging immediate duty-bearers to cover the last mile and turn children’s rights into practice in children’s everyday life and
• Building Child Friendly Systems that, at the community and higher levels, are responsible for fulfilling children’s rights in the areas of capacity development; technical assistance; evidence building; and networking, advocacy and policy influencing.

Vision: “A friendly and responsive community where children and adolescents achieve their full potential”, and mission is “to ensure children and adolescents achieve their rights to health, education, nutrition and protection by making duty bearer and community responsive to their wellbeing”.

CINI has been a part of various networks across education, protection, health and nutrition at the global, national and state level.  CINI is the State Secretariat for the White Ribbon Alliance working on sensitising communities on issues of safe motherhood and enhancing quality of care at government facilities; and member of the National network of Girls Not Brides in India and is the State level Secretariat in West Bengal.

CINI is a part of the National Action and Coordination Group against Violence against Children; Member of More than Bride Alliance; National Coalition on Education; Governing Body member of the Indian Association for the Life Skills Education [IALSE]; life member of the National Nutrition Alliance and Coalition; State Secretariat for the West Bengal Right to Education Forum; member of the West Bengal Education; and founder member of Action against Trafficking and sexual Exploitation of children (ATSEC).

• One of the oldest and largest NGO in East of India. 46 years of deep rooted work at grassroots and national level
• Reputed brand image in the development sector
• Strong working relationship with the government, local panchayat/ urban local bodies, communities and other stakeholders
• In-depth reach at the community level reaching out to 7 million people
• Ability to manage large and complex programs
• Staying rooted to the ground and listening to the beneficiaries
• Strong governance system

CINI with its rich legacy of working at the grassroots level over the past five decades has been able to draw upon its understanding and experience regarding the social and cultural context/norms, issues prevalent among the marginalised and vulnerable population, needs of the communities it works with, their challenges, inhibitions and other social issues to address these issues in a more holistic and convergent manner.Over the years, CINI has undertaken multiple roles from being an implementing agency, capacity building partner, providing technical assistance, networking, advocacy and policy, research, monitoring and documentation. The knowledge and experience has led to utilising multidirectional processes of learning and application across roles - i.e. insights from implementation used to enrich other roles and vice versa; this has helped CINI grow as a capacity building and technical support agency of national repute.

Given the in-depth understanding of the development landscape, coupled with a strong and transparent governance system followed at CINI, the acceptability within the community and the grass root level impact which is achievable within a short period of time due to the long standing credibility of the organisation within the ecosystem and the intense engagement of the staff at the community/stakeholder level generates high impact for the project donor. 

We think, that CINI has the right mix of expertise in terms of human resource, field experience, community reach, close working relationship with the government, local panchayat, other stake holders and communities and a vision to make each project sustainable with a clear exit strategy without compromising on the quality of deliverables, ensuring the overall impact with a transparent system which resonates with the corporate thinking.