Father Care Campaign
Acampaign for Promoting Men's Involvement in Securing Rights of Children in India

Despite the Government of India’s promises and efforts to ensure child rights, millions of children suffer abuse, exploitation, malnutrition, illness, and mortality. Girls, children of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and poor children face additional hardship. While much of the responsibility for guaranteeing child rights and protecting children lies with the government, Centre for Health and Social Justice (CHSJ) believes that men as father play a crucial role in creating equitable relationship, being nonviolent fathers and caregivers in order to achieve family well-being, gender equality, and better health for mothers, fathers, and children.
 
CHSJ has had success in the field of women’s rights by working with men to change their own beliefs and behavior toward women. With this approach, CHSJ initiated Father Care Campaign initiated to explore the possibility of a similar approach to involve men in the protection and fulfillment of children’s rights. CHSJ intended to explore whether it is possible to help young men become caring fathers who ensure the rights of their own children.
 
CHSJ seeks to integrate a child rights perspective to its existing work with Men on Masculinity, Gender Equality and Human rights. This initiative aims for men to be allies in supporting women’s social and economic equality, in part by taking on more responsibility for childcare and domestic work.
 
The overall goal of the project was to “seed community level social change processes in different locations across the country where men start taking active roles in their families and communities for securing women and children's rights and bringing equity.
 
The objectives were as follows:
 
Objective 1: Support and Develop a National Platform of Practice
 
Objective 2: Support and Strengthen State Level networks on Father Care Campaign
 
Objective 3: Support community level interventions and campaigns for facilitating changes in attitudes and behaviour among young fathers and fathers-to-be.
 
CHSJ sought to use previous experience to explore how men could be engaged as father concerned about health and well being of their children and facilitating children to develop their own ethical standards and take informed decisions thus seeking to integrate a child rights perspective to the ongoing work with Men on masculinities, gender justice and human rights.
Apart from the local level campaigns CHSJ also sought to draw experiences from its engagement with FEM, SANAM and the Global Menengage Alliance and created a sharing process of not only having a body of community level practice in India but also linking up with South Asian and global actions around the issue of Men Care
 
Project Partner: CHSJ with technical support of HAQ- Centre for Child Rights and FEM members implemented this campaign
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Project Area: Rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand

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