CRY - Beliefs
CRY believes that children are citizens in their own right, entitled to the full spectrum of human rights. CRY does not believe in charity. Nor does it run schools, orphanages or dispensaries. Instead it partners grassroots-level NGOs working with children, their parents and communities. In over 2500 villages and slums across 18 States, CRY has witnessed transformational change happening. Over 1,500,000 children across India have opportunities they could not dream of because you chose to make them happen. The grim reality, however, is that despite all these many small triumphs within CRY's reach the outlook for most of India's underprivileged children will not change on a significant scale. That will require much more.

What sets CRY apart from other non-government organisations (NGOs) in India?
( Taken from http://www.cry.org/whoweare/strengths.html )

We are an indigenous Indian movement working towards restoring to underprivileged Indian children their basic rights to - survival, protection, development and participation.

We are independent without any political, corporate influence or donor ideology, thereby permitting us to go beyond philanthropy to being a credible voice for India's children in the realm of national policy.

We believe in the philosophy of partnership be it with our NGO partners, donors, volunteers, or well wishers. Our hands-on approach to grant making gives us a first-hand feel of the community's priorities, creating an iterative learning process in areas of programme planning, monitoring and evaluation for us and our partners.

We are assiduous about observing the highest standards of accountability and transparency within the organsation and in the public domain. We were one of the first Indian NGO to publish our annual results.

Our experience, reach and equity across geography, issues, ethnicities, socio-economic categories has resulted in high levels of visibility, the freedom to define our own agenda and a public profile that minimizes potential risks.

Our approach is inclusive - we provide an opportunity for everyone to participate in this movement for child rights within the context of their own lives.

We have developed a thorough process for selection and appraisal of initiatives to be supported, as well as highly effective planning, monitoring and evaluation systems that are applied to each of the projects that we fund.

Accomplishing the numerous milestones in over 28 years has only been possible due to CRY's ability to continually attract, retain and develop a cadre of talented, committed professionals at salary levels that are a fraction of their market values. Our full-time employees form the core of this leading organisation for child rights.

We invest in organisational processes to help build, sustain and refresh our mission focus and participative decision-making.

These assets, and CRY's track record as a pioneer in the sector, will, we hope, also make overt social justice grant making and resource mobilisation more feasible for the sector as a whole and help tap the creative energies of donors and NGOs, especially those working in less popular areas and causes.