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Values

CWIN has built its structures and systems, its policies and procedures, and its training and accountability for staff and partners using a framework of core values. These include Integrity in our theory and practice of securing child rights, and Consistency in securing the safety and Best Interests of Children. Our Creativity in seeking out viable solutions is based on our sense of Responsibility towards the individual child as well as to society at large, and this may involve Risk-Taking and Innovation as necessary. Teamwork within the organization and Partnership without serve to strengthen our work. We Respect our constituency, our work and our partners, and have earned the reputation of being Trustworthy in all quarters. We work with and towards Non-Discrimination, Non-Violence and Inclusivity, and endeavor to practice Transparency for Good Governance.

Introduction

Established in 1987, Child Workers in Nepal Concerned Centre (CWIN-Nepal) is a pioneer child rights organization in Nepal. CWIN-Nepal is an advocacy organization for the child’s rights with a focus on children living and working under the most difficult circumstances.

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 realization 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 which has members from all the seven provinces of Nepal. Likewise, CWIN empowers and mobilizes 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 mobilized 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 child development and protection services including the Child Helplines, transit centres, self-reliance and empowerment of children. CWIN has championed child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health issue in Nepal by initiating the first Child and Adolescent psychiatry OPD at the Kanti Children’s Hospital in 2015. CWIN has in its team Nepal’s only three Child Psychiatrists, Psychiatrists who are doing their PhD on child Psychiatry, Clinical Psychologists and Counsellors and 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 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 also ventured into uncharted territory by undertaking reconstruction work necessitated by the devastating earthquake of 2015; most notably, the construction of 20 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 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 organizations (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 minimization of all forms of abuse and exploitation, sexual exploitation including online harms, reducing child labour exploitation, socialization 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 members 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 Organizations Working with Child Participation, NAOSC and Men Engage Alliance. CWIN is also a member of a wide range of international initiatives and networks such as ECPAT International, Global March, Global Alcohol Policy Alliance (GAPC), WFAD (World Federation Against Drugs), Global Campaign for Education (GCE), CRC-Asia, Child Helpline International.

CWIN-Nepal is leading the national alcohol policy in Nepal and is a national coordinator for Nepal Alcohol Policy Advocacy (NAPA). 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.

 

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