Recently, we partnered with UNICEF India and Indian Association For Promotion Of Adoption & Child Welfare to host a one-day consultation on Strengthening Sponsorship Support for Vulnerable Children. 🚸

From hashtag#frontline CSOs and DCPUs to child protection hashtag#experts, over 50 participants gathered to reimagine sponsorship-not just as financial aid, but as a hashtag#holistic, rights-based family strengthening approach to help children thrive 'within' their hashtag#families. 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

📣 Through powerful conversations on hashtag#schemes like Bal Sangopan Yojana and Mission Vatsalya, shared hashtag#experiences from the field, and a deep dive into community-driven models, the consultation became a space for hashtag#collective reflection, learning, and hashtag#action.

At Prerana, we believe that hashtag#sponsorship is most effective when it is not treated as a stand-alone intervention, but rather woven into a broader family hashtag#strengthening framework - one that is rooted in empowerment, care, and sustained connection. 

hashtag#Grateful to all who are working to keep children safe, supported, and surrounded by love. 🌻

Tata Institute of Social Sciences Snehalaya (Official) Catalysts For Social Action Community Aid and Sponsorship Programme (CASP) India Salaam Baalak Trust Mumbai Pratham Education Foundation Bal Asha Trust Committed Communities Development Trust 

Geetarani Lourembam Rashmi Taylor Ragamala R. Datta Bhakti Patel 

hashtag#SponsorshipSupport hashtag#ChildProtection hashtag#FamilyStrengthening hashtag#CommunityCare hashtag#PreranaCollaborates hashtag#EveryChildMatters
hashtag#UNICEFMaharashtra hashtag#IAPA hashtag#Prerana hashtag#SD5 hashtag#SDG10
hashtag#ProtectChildren

A Dehradun rally called for greater acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, with participants demanding an end to discrimination and equal rights, including the legal right to parenthood through adoption.

A working professional who lives proudly with her identity, the woman advocates fiercely for the community, particularly championing the cause of adoption rights. Photo | Express

Narendra Sethi

Tarun Karthick

Sri Vijaya Puram, 22 April 2025

In a significant move aimed at bridging cultural traditions and modern legal frameworks, Rayhaan Pasha, President of the Nicobar Youth Association, has written to the Chief Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Administration, urging legal recognition for traditional adoption practices observed in the Nicobar Islands.

For generations, Nicobarese families have adopted children within their communities — particularly during times of loss or hardship — offering them love, care, and full integration into their new families. While deeply respected and accepted within tribal society, these traditional adoptions currently lack formal legal recognition, resulting in difficulties for adopted children in obtaining essential documents, accessing educational opportunities, and availing government welfare schemes.

Adoptees have had to live with all the lies and deception they have been told about being given away out of love for a better life in the West.
Photo: PixabayWhy does the collective society so heartily tolerate the injustice done to its "Norwegian" children? And why do they not want to talk about it? Is it because the injustice is built on the basis of our shared values ​​and attitudes?

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Elin Netland

MILIMO CHITSULO and JULIUS MBEWE

Jason and Lacy Carney

2nd Milk, a Christian charity claiming to feed underprivileged children in Malawi has been exposed as a fraudulent operation designed to give the owners access to significant donor funding that they use to fund a luxury lifestyle. Financial statements track how the charity founders pocketed most of the money donated to the charity, ramping payments to themselves up as authorities started looking at their charitable businesses more closely.

GOLDEN MATONGA & GODFREY MAOCHA 

Closure of LongArm Child Care, a Lilongwe-based orphanage, is pitting its American sponsors against its Malawi-based Country Director. The Americans believe the closure is aimed at stripping the orphanage of its assets and that officials from the social welfare office are part of the plot. The locals say the Americans use the NGO to steal.

JULIUS MBEŴE 

The closure of a Malawian-registered Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), LongArm Child Care, has opened a can of worms amid allegations that it could be linked to an extortion plot involving the local managers and officials from the Social Welfare Department, who put pressure on the American funders of the NGO to make payments amid threats of closure.

The Swiss-based NGO Terre des hommes is losing $10 million in annual contributions as a result of the suspension of humanitarian aid by the United States administration.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has “serious” and “immediate” consequences, said Terre des hommes Lausanne, which is Switzerland’s largest children’s aid organisation.

The NGO explains that projects in nine countries have been affected, with around 1.5 million beneficiaries losing “vital support”.

In detail, projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, India and Burkina Faso are directly affected. Due to the cessation of contributions to UN partner organisations, activities in Romania and Nigeria are also affected.

The end of US aid also means that the contracts of 440 employees, including over 200 in Bangladesh and more than 100 in Egypt, have had to be suspended or terminated.

BY PIJ REPORTER

Pastor Ryan Lilli, a South African cleric who worked at Kondanani Children’s Village, a Bvumbe-based orphanage, has been found with one case to answer by the Midima Magistrate’s Court in Limbe.

Both Lilli’s lawyer Tamando Chokotho and private practice lawyer Chikondi Chijozi, who is prosecuting the case, told PIJ that Lilli has been found with a case to answer on the count of indecent assault.

He was, however, found with no case to answer on the other two counts of rape and having sex with a minor.

“On the charge of rape, the court found that the accused has no case to answer. On the charge of indecent assault, the court found that the accused has a case to answer and on the charge of having sexual intercourse with a minor under one’s care, he was also found with no case to answer.

BY PIJ INVESTIGATIONS

The Timotheos Foundation in Malawi was founded on June 10, 2011, in a quest to spread Christian evangelism and support the country’s most vulnerable, through among others, education bursaries to the most underprivileged children.

The foundation was a development arm of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Malawi. Today, decades later, the foundation is at the centre of one of the most horrific allegations of child sexual abuse in the country.

At the center of the allegations is a Dutch National, Wim Akster, who in 2011 responded to a call to help run the foundation. Through the foundation and support of the Dutch Timotheos Board, they were going to tackle poverty, support the communities surrounding its churches and work with reformed churches to spread the Word of God to local Malawians.

Six boys who worked at the foundation allege that they were molested by Akster, accusations that led to Akster’s arrest in August 2020…Akster denies abusing the boys, arguing all sexual activity was consensual, and has applied to the constitutional court, seeking a declaration that his arrest infringed on his right to privacy and, in effect, a declaration that the country’s anti-homosexuality laws are illegal.