Parivaar www.parivaar.org

General Introduction

Parivaar is a humanitarian service organisation, based in 24 Parganas (S), West Bengal, and at present is chiefly working for total care and overall development of children from categories like orphans, girl children highly vulnerable to exploitation, victimization, and trafficking, 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 moulded 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 on 1st October ’11 there are 675 resident children at Parivaar. At the Parivaar campus is also located Parivaar’s own Formal School ‘Amar Bharat Vidyapeeth’ in which the resident children of Parivaar study.

Parivaar’s institutions :

A. Parivaar Ashram Boys’ Residential Institution

B. Parivaar Sarada Teertha Girls’ Residential Institution

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 for serving ‘Divine in Man’ as taught by Swami Vivekananda. He did his B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur, worked at Infosys (2000-01), and then did his MBA from IIM Calcutta ( 2001-03). Immediately after passing out of IIM in 2003, with just 3 children in a small rented building with almost no financial resources, Vinayak started Parivaar. Till the level of 15 children at Parivaar, he used to take 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.

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 scaling trajectory, In the 12-month phase July 2011- December 2012 Parivaar is undergoing scaling up to a level of 1200 resident children (from the present level of 675 children – 435 boys and 240 girls) and the infrastructure development for the same is going on.

At Class 10 Madhyamik Parivaar has had 100% pass result. There have been students scoring as high as 85% marks. It is to be noted that all 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 straight admitted to Class 4 or 5. They are now being trained for engineering and medical entrance examinations and have been enrolled with some leading coaching institutes for the same.

Other Initiatives

Village Service Activities

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

ii. Welfare work of medical help, emergency pecuniary help, organizing sports events for village youth, etc. has continued. Hepatitis-B Vaccination Camps have been organized in which 800 persons from villages have taken Hepatitis B vaccination in 3 rounds (each after a monthly interval). In fact Parivaar is like a guardian to entire neighboring villages and anyone who is 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 24 hours Ambulance services for the population in the adjoining rural areas. Since there were no hospitals in the nearby area, all patients in critical condition have to be taken to hospitals in Kolkata. General village population 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 avail of Parivaar’s Ambulance services.

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

v. Since 2007, Parivaar is conducting tutorship programs for 2000 students through local groups in the selected tribal villages of Bankura and Purulia districts.

Field-base in tribal areas

Parivaar Ashram being the hub of training of Seva-vratees, is also the base for many other projects serving the rural areas in 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 at 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) Paarivaar has field volunteers and contact persons.

The three main tribal blocks where we have developed field units are:

1. Belpahari in Midnapore (West) district in West Bengal
2. Singhbhum (East) district in Jharkhand
3. Selected tribal pockets in Bankura and Purula districts in West Bengal

In last Financial Year, Parivaar raised and spent more than Rs 6 Crores on its various projects as well as infrastructure-development for expansion. All of financial resources are met through Indians only. Out of this, more than 80% is through donations from individuals.