A free evening centre for children of classes 6 to 10.
It is run by an ARISE club — young people aged eighteen and above who have completed the movement’s two courses. It runs five weekday evenings a week, and it costs your family nothing at any stage, under any condition.
Enrolment is free
No fee, no deposit, no materials charge, no donation expected and no condition. Neither you nor your child is ever asked for money, and nothing is asked for your signature except the consents.
Enrolment is open
A centre is open to any child of the age it serves, without reference to school, means, caste, community, faith, language, sex or ability. No child is refused for want of a document.
Classes 6 to 10
The curriculum is written for those ages. Where age or class cannot be evidenced, your word is taken and recorded as such.
It is not a tuition centre. A Nurture Centre does not repeat what your child does at school and does not follow a school’s chapter sequence, a board or an examination. It takes Science, Mathematics and English and makes them experiential — something a child does rather than copies — alongside growth as a whole person.
And nothing is promised about marks, ranks, results, admissions, jobs or scholarships. We will not make a claim of that kind to a family, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
If the premises fill up, how is a place decided?
Where enrolment has to be limited by the size of the premises, the limit is stated openly, a waiting list is kept, and children are taken in the order they came.
No place is decided by a test, by a recommendation, by what a family can give, or by anybody’s discretion.
Two hours, and ten minutes that hold them together.
Every evening has the same shape, so that a child always knows what is coming next.
What the Balasabha is, and why Friday belongs to the children
The Balasabha is the children’s own assembly, held every Friday in the competency slot, for twenty-five minutes. A child chairs it, by rotation, so that every child chairs at some point across the year.
The children report their week, raise anything they wish, propose one thing to do, and decide it. Every child who wishes to speak is heard, and nothing raised is dismissed unheard. The associates sit at the side and answer briefly at the end.
It is the part of the week where a child learns that their voice does something. If your child comes home talking about an argument they won on a Friday, that is the design working.
Who actually teaches, and are they prepared?
The associates of the club teach — young people aged eighteen and above who have completed the Nurture Centre Management Course before ever standing in front of a child. Roughly twenty children sit with one associate.
Every module comes with a trainer guide, written so that a nineteen-year-old can walk in and deliver a good session. A module without a guide is not delivered.
The Centre Mentor observes, guides and validates the work, and signs each session on the day. The associates are not left to improvise with your child’s evening.
Who is in the room, and who is not.
These are not assurances. They are written conditions of a centre being allowed to open at all — and a centre that cannot meet them does not run a session.
Two named adults
Present at every session, from fifteen minutes before it begins to fifteen minutes after it ends. Never one adult. A session does not run otherwise.
The screening file
Nobody has contact with a child until every item of their screening file is complete — associates, mentors, volunteers, partners’ volunteers, guests and vendors alike.
The Police Clearance Certificate
No adult has unsupervised or sole-adult contact with a child before their Police Clearance Certificate has issued. Supervised contact may begin only on a completed file with the certificate applied for and the receipt held.
The Centre Mentor
A screened safeguarding professional, not an associate, appointed by the Rebuild India Foundation, and the Youth Protection Officer for that centre. Where they cannot attend, a named deputy screened to the same standard stands in — and a session does not run unless one of the two is present.
The five rules written into the agreement before a centre opens
Every centre-hosting agreement carries a campus annexure providing for five matters, complete before the centre opens —
(1) a defined centre footprint within the premises;
(2) two named adults present from fifteen minutes before the session to fifteen minutes after;
(3) attendance called at arrival and at departure, and no child released except to a parent or to a person the parent has named;
(4) a lit and supervised waiting area;
(5) a named adult responsible for the last child to leave.
No centre opens before that annexure exists. This admits of no exception and is not relaxed for anybody’s timetable.
Separately, no centre may open until it is certified — the named safeguarding roles all filled and published, every adult screened and cleared, the consent and reporting systems in place, and the external routes displayed.
The card on the wall, written for your child to read
Every centre displays a contact card where a child can read it, and every child and every parent is given one. It says, in the child’s own words:
If something is wrong, tell someone. You will not be in trouble.
If a grown-up asks you to keep a secret from your parents, tell someone. No grown-up here should ever be alone with you where no one can see. Telling is never wrong.
And it carries the outside numbers, with the plain statement that they are not part of ARISE and that we will not know the child called.
Your child may stop coming, at any time.
Without notice, without a reason, and without any consequence of any kind. And if they wish to come back next month, next term or next year, they may.
There is nothing to sign to leave. Nothing is charged. Nothing is said to the child. Nothing is held against the family, and nothing changes if they return.
What is asked of you as a parent — the four consents
No child takes part in anything without the informed, written consent of a parent or guardian. Consent is taken separately for four matters, and each may be given or refused independently of the others.
A · Enrolment and participation. Your child’s particulars, the emergency contact, and the persons to whom your child may be released. Taken once, at enrolment.
B · Photography and media. What may be made, for what use, for how long, and where it may appear. Refusing it does not affect enrolment — a child without consent B attends, and is not photographed.
C · Off-site activity and transport. Taken afresh for each occasion, naming the destination, the timings, the adults, the transport, the driver and the vehicle, the ratio, and the departure and return.
D · Medical and emergency. Allergies, conditions, medication and its administration, consent to emergency treatment, and who is contacted first. Refreshed on any change and at least annually.
Consent is taken in a language you read, and is read aloud to you where you do not. You may withdraw any consent at any time. A refusal is never held against a child or a family, and is never mentioned to the child. You may also attend the centre at any time, unannounced.
What is written down about your child, and who may see it.
Your child is assessed against their own starting point and reported as change — never as a grade, never as a rank, and never in comparison with another child.
The Ankur baseline — and the short list of people who may see it
Ankur is the child baseline instrument. It is taken when a child joins, and re-read each term, so that the centre can see whether a child is growing.
A child’s Ankur record is seen only by the teaching associate, the Centre Mentor and the Centre. It is never shared with an employer, a partner, a school, a donor, or any person outside the centre.
It is never used in the recognition of a club, an associate or a centre. No child is ranked, and no centre is compared on a child’s result.
As the parent, you have access to the records concerning your own child, and you may ask for them at the centre.
What the centre keeps, and what leaves the centre
Four records live at the centre, on paper: the attendance register, the session record signed by the Centre Mentor on the day, the emergency contact list, and the year’s map of monthly initiatives.
What leaves the centre each month is three lines, and no more: associates active, sessions run, incidents. Everything else stays at the centre and is produced on inspection, on audit, at the annual review, and to a parent asking about their own child.
No tracking, no behavioural monitoring and no targeted advertising is ever directed at a child. A child’s data is held separately from every other record of the movement and never joined to it, and is reviewed when the child turns eighteen.
You should never wait for ARISE.
If you believe a child is at risk, call the outside numbers first. You do not need our permission, you do not need to tell us first, and we will not know that you called.
Childline — 1098
Free, at any hour, for any child. Independent of this movement in every respect.
Police — 112
And the Special Juvenile Police Unit. Also open to you: the Child Welfare Committee, the District Child Protection Unit, the NCPCR or your State Commission and the POCSO e-Box, your State Women & Child Development Department, and the host institution’s own safeguarding officer.
Any attempt by anybody in this movement to discourage, delay, condition or punish the use of an external route is misconduct of the gravest kind. It is written that way on purpose.
The routes inside ARISE, if you would rather start with us
Speak to the Centre Mentor — the centre’s Youth Protection Officer. They receive every concern at the centre, make the child safe, and notify the Designated Safeguarding Officer the same day.
Where the concern is about a role-holder — the Centre Mentor, the Designated Safeguarding Officer, a Faculty Advisor, an officer or a trustee — it goes directly to the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Officer and the Board Safeguarding Trustee, and to the police, and the person concerned is not told.
The names and contact particulars of every safeguarding role-holder are published at the centre and given to you at enrolment, and are kept current. A role that falls vacant is filled before the next session runs.
A personal duty lies on every associate, mentor, advisor and office-bearer: report a disclosure or a suspicion within twenty-four hours, whatever anyone else may or may not have done. No internal process of this movement may delay, condition or excuse a report the law requires.
A person who reports in good faith incurs no liability and suffers no detriment here.
A centre where nothing is ever raised is not a safe centre. It is a centre where children have not yet learnt that telling is safe.