The Child Protection Services Nagaland has launched a project to protect abandoned newborn babies at Dimapur on Monday.
The project is called Cradle of Hope Project. It was launched by Advisor, Social Welfare, Home Guards & Civil Defence, Noke Wangnao.
In accordance with this initiative, 90 strategic locations of Dimapur including police stations, hospitals, public health care centres, anganwadi centres and child care institutions have been identified and cradles will be placed there.
These places will be linked with the District Child Protection Unit, Child Welfare Committee and Childline under the protection and responsibility of the village/ward Child Protection Committee.
The cradles have been placed at crucial points so that any person who wants to surrender his/her child in distress can do so in anonymity and by placing the child in the cradle lovingly, reports The Morung Express.
The main motive of this project is to send the abandoned babies to proper homes and prevent harm or death of these babies.
Chubainla Jamir, director of Child Protection Services Nagaland said that the number of abandoned babies in the state has increased and many of them are found to be left in drains, trash bins in a pitiable condition.
She also said that many issues like unplanned pregnancy, poverty can force parents to abandon their children but most of them are found lying in worst places due to the illiteracy or ignorance of parents that they can legally surrender their child and give them a good future.
The project will help parents know the proper ways and avenues of surrendering their children and will also help in providing appropriate shelter and services to the abandoned child.
The project will also address the issue of setting one Specialized Adoption Agency (SAA) in each district that was raised by Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) to the Nagaland government as every child receive through this project will be directly linked to the nearest SAA through child welfare committee.
During the launching of the pilot project, a book titled ‘Naga customary practices of child adoption’, initiated and compiled by Prodigals’ Home was released by Wangnao.