Category: Stories

Child in Need Institute, India has launched an urgent response to the COVID disaster in India.  As the catastrophe engulfs the country and the health system is overwhelmed,  preventing COVID transmission is critical. 

Families desperately need practical information and assistance to prevent further devastation from COVID.  CINI has 47 years’ experience reaching families in the city slums and rural villages.  It’s field workers are trusted in areas where resources are scarce and poverty is severe. They are the best people to spread these urgent and lifesaving public health messages.

Our appeal will fund the emergency COVID response and CINI Australia’s ongoing community development programs in rural villages and with families affected by HIV/AIDS. These programs address poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and child marriage which have worsened with the devastating impact COVID on already vulnerable families.

Donate at https://mothers-day-celebration-2021-ciniaustralia.raisely.com/donate

Or by direct debit at CINI Australia, Child In Need India Gift Fund: BSB 036 306 AC 344863Donations are tax deductible

This Newsletter tells you about the work CINI is doing to support families through the six months of the COVID panademic. They are helping families with emergency nutrition and keeping children, who are now out of school, safe.

Donations to CINI Australia are now tax deductible

This year’s Christmas Appeal is more important than ever as India continues to be severely affected by COVID-19

 Donate in lieu of a Christmas gift or Secret Santa

When COVID struck, CINI quickly identified the greatest needs in their communities. A huge response was mounted. Food parcels were distributed throughout the state. As the lockdown eases CINI is now responding to worsened poverty, malnutrition, interrupted schooling and diminished safety of children.
Our committed field workers are again working in more than 94 villages.

Read the latest news from India and how CINI’s emergency response is bringing relief to families coping with the COVID-19 lockdown and now the damage caused by Cyclone Amphan. Read what CINI Australia is doing to help.

CINI Australia’s COVID Crisis Appeal is remaining open if you would like to give these families a hand to get through the lockdown and recover from Amphan.

Fresh water is in short supply, homes have been severely damaged and belongings lost. CINI is helping with food packages again and funds to help with homes.

Thank you for supporting our Mothers Day event. CINI has been providing emergency food and soap to families who can’t otherwise access enough for their children.This means we can keep our important community development and HIV programs running as much as possible through the lockdown. The teams will be ready to start again as the lock down eases.

Everyone who donates to CINI Australia’s Mother’s Day Covid Crisis Appeal will go in the draw for one of 9 beautiful prizes kindly donated by generous local businesses.

Please contribute to this appeal that will fund CINI’s emergency response to the lockdown in India. Families are being provided with packages of essential basic food supplies to help them survive this difficult time as well as soap, sanitizer and education about ho to keep safe.

CINI responded quickly to the strict pandemic lockdown imposed in mid March in India. Infection numbers still continue to rise and the lockdown is being eased. Life has been extremely difficult for daily wage earners who rely on finding work each day to feed their families. A a result of no income and closed markets, access to food has been limited. CINI and quickly Nutrimix production and made packages of essential dry food rations. They have delivered these to 10s of thousands of families throughout the state.

Book your tickets now at www.trybooking.com/XUIT

and read about the movie starring Emma Thompson

Tickets $25

Please join us for  great evening at

Windsor Cinema, 98 Stirling Highway, Nedlands.

Nibbles & Drinks (extra) at 6, movie at 6:30

We are fundraising for CINI Australia’s village program with the women and children of Chainagar, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal.

Read more about the Child Friendly Communities program that this event is supporting

We will soon be introducing our new members

2 New Volunteer Board members were Needed

 It is 8 years since the launch of CINI Australia and it is time to expand our board

Would you like to contribute to positive change for women and children in India?

Your help in Australia will empower families in India to break the cycle of poverty.

Do you have 6 – 8 hours per month to join our enthusiastic, hands-on board?

CINI Australia is a registered not for profit and charity supporting sustainable development in India

since 2011. Our programs focus on health, nutrition, education and child protection.

We are seeking two volunteer board members with the enthusiasm, resources and skills to expand our support base and to achieve our goal of financial sustainability. Experience in fundraising and/or publicity would be an advantage.

For more information or to apply please

email Peter at admin@ciniaustralia.org by 24^thAugust 2018

Bookings are now open

Come celebrate with a delicious afternoon tea and a glass of sparkling wine. There will be a raffle, silent auction, door prize and a Mother’s Day gift stall. Have a glimpse of India.

You will hear the latest update from CINI Australia’s projects in India and how your support is helping young mothers give their children a better chance in life and giving communities the skills to build a path out of poverty.

Tickets $55-full, $40-concession or $400-table of 8. (wine extra)

Bookings and more informationat: http://www.trybooking.com/UOFP

Many of CINI education centers in the slums are supported through “Educate A Child Sponsorships”.

We visited these inspiring centers in Kolkata and Siliguri. Often the environment around the center is confronting and very poor with very little resources for families. The centers are a single room with mats or desks and a colourful posters provided by CINI. The local community provides the venue, often a school, club or sports center. Classes follow the Government curriculum as well as providing the chance to play and create.

An essential aspect is protection. This could not have been clearer than when I visited a center near Kolkata’s Park Street area, not far from the elegant shops and big restaurants.

The centre was a buzz of activity as children arrived back from school. The room was small, hot and humid. The ceiling fans didn’t work. No one complained. One child offered me a fan. The children, 6 to 13 years were busy doing their maths and Bengali, reading, copying from the black boards under the guidance of a kind and focused teacher. The children obviously felt safe and nurtured.

I asked if I could visit where the home. We walked down an alley to the railway line – home. There were hundreds of dwellings made from tarps and bamboo along the track, women were preparing food between the tracks, toddlers were playing under their eye. The women in their twenties told me they’d always live there; they hadn’t been to school and their houses were falling apart. There was no running water, they cary it in from the government supply truck in plastic bottles. There are no toilets.

The center provides so much that is essential: safety, help with school, some where to draw, dance and play including safety and the chance at education.

In Siliguri CINI has 4 slum education centers and CINI works in 50 of the Siliguri’s 186 slums.

Many families who migrate from poorer state such as Bihar& Jharkhand end up in slums on very low incomes.  Here were 2 teachers with 50 happy children, 5 to 16 years, class 1 to 8, speaking Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Nepali. Amazing!

If you would like to support these centres, an ” educate A Child” sponsorship is $10 per month

Go to Sponsorships

During  our February visit to CINI we went to see CINI’s Sponsor A Mother and Her Baby program. Some of our Australian donors are sponsoring mothers in the villages of Diamond Harbour district, South of Kolkata, where the Hooghly River enters the Bay of Bengal.

After reaching as far as the vehicle could take us we continued on foot through the village surrounded by padi fields. We passed ponds, tube wells, mud huts, and an occasional brick house. Most people have “joint families” were the daughters-in-law join their husband’s family. Cooking is done together by the women of the family on clay stoves built into the ground.

For the last four years, I have met up with Millie, supervisor of the local health workers. She guides these village women in caring for mothers and children

These “self-help-group” woman are trained by CINI and help about 90 women and children each. Twice a month they visit pregnant mums providing support and education. They make sure they get to the antenatal clinic, understand why hospital births is safer and importantly, help the young mother in those first few years of her babies life. This has a huge effect on preventing malnutrition and childhood illness.

Soumitas, the health worker took us visit Naseema (name changed), in Giopalpur village. She was 7 months pregnant with her first baby. She is 24 years and in spite of weighing 35 kilograms, was well. She was having regular antenatal care and taking her iron. She lives in a joint family and her husband is a daily labourer, which is unreliable and low income work. Her confidence with the health worker was evident.

Naseema’s mother was probably also  malnourished and anaemic from childhood. As a result, Naseema is under weight and her baby ‘at risk’.  Through “Sponsor A Mother” she receives close attention and support for the “first 1000 days”. We can expect her baby to be born safely in hospital, weigh at least 2.5kg, be better able to resist childhood illness and develop normally. This is the point of change for the next generation.

If you would like to give a hand to young mother from early pregnancy until her baby is two years old go to Sponsorships

Saturday 13th May: High Tea & Fundraiser

Bookings are now open for CINI Australia’s 4th Annual Mother’s Day Celebration

Make it a Very Happy Mother’s Day. This is an opportunity to help young mothers in India provide their children with many of the things we take for granted: health care, good nutrition, schooling and safety. CINI’s programs start at conception, continue through childhood into adolescents, the parents of the next generation.