Miracle Foundation India
Organization background

Miracle Foundation India (MFI) is an international nonprofit that collaborates with state governments in 10 states across India to help orphans and foster children find safe, stable, and permanent families. MFI unites children with families, partnering with frontline workers, preventing children from entering the system whenever possible, and stabilizing placements for children until they find a forever family.

Project background

Tamil Nadu has the highest number of Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in India, accounting for 43.5% of the number of children in CCIs across the entire country. Tamil Nadu's State Policy for Children creates family-strengthening services to prevent entry and re-entry of children into institutions.

The premise behind MFI is that a child will always thrive better with its extended family than in foster care, hence MFI's focus is on finding a way to reunite children with their extended families. MFI has contacts with various NGO's and government agencies, which helps them to source potential children who could be moved from foster care to their extended families.

Once a child has been identified, MFI works with the child, and various stakeholders to setup the envorinment to facilitate the child's return to its extended family, monitoring the process every step of the way to ensure that the child's interests are taken care of. After the child has been placed, MFI continues to monitor the child's wellbeing for a few years to ensure that the child is thriving in its new environment. All this is done using objective measures that MFI has developed.

This process is implemented in MFI's Put Families First — Strengthen and Stabilize Families program. The operatives of the program are called child protection functionaries (CPIs), and MFI works to train these CPI's to implement MFI's models of transition and gatekeeping. At all stages, CPI's ensure that program interventions are driven by the voices of children/youth and that care leavers/youth lead a meaningful and productive life.

GKF contributions to MFI