ARISE · Governance
What governs ARISE.
Nothing here runs on custom or on the word of whoever is in the room. The movement is written down — a charter, a constitution, bye-laws, policies and manuals, in a fixed order of authority. This page answers the questions asked first: who runs this, what binds it, who decides and who cannot, what happens if something goes wrong, and how money is handled.
Named people, and one body that carries everything.
ARISE is a movement of the Rebuild India Foundation. The Foundation is the contracting party for everything done in the movement’s name and the holder of every liability arising from it. Within that, three answers cover almost every question about who decides.
Dr Varun Murthy, Founder-Custodian
He holds the instruments of the movement in trust until its own elected leadership is in place. It is a working office rather than an honorific: it exists so that there is always one person answerable for the rules while the movement is young.
The Council
The Board of the Rebuild India Foundation is the Council — the body that makes and amends everything below the charter and the constitution, and the body a club’s board ultimately answers to.
The Centre
The Foundation’s ARISE office is the Centre. It keeps the records, issues the receipts, validates the returns a club sends in, administers the brand, and settles anything the written rules leave open.
Elected leadership arrives from the ground up. Each club elects its own board, and the first boards take office on 1 July 2027. A national leadership of the movement comes into being when there are enough clubs to need one. Until then the Foundation carries the responsibility, and this site says so rather than implying an assembly that does not sit.
What the Foundation carries, and what a club never carries
ARISE is not a separately registered entity. There is no ARISE company, society or trust. It is a movement of the Rebuild India Foundation, and every agreement — with a college, a centre host, a partner, a donor — is made by the Foundation.
The Foundation is the sole party to every centre-hosting agreement and the sole holder of every liability arising under it. A club is named as the operator of its Nurture Centre and never as the principal. No college, no Faculty Advisor, no office-bearer and no associate carries that liability.
A club also holds and spends no money at all. Its work is funded from the Foundation’s central custody, and nothing it does puts a member’s own money at risk.
Five tiers, and one rule that binds them.
Every rule of this movement is written down before it is applied to anybody, and every instrument sits in one of five tiers. No subordinate instrument is valid so far as it is inconsistent with one above it. Amendment authority runs downward only — a manual can never quietly lower what the constitution guarantees.
The Founding Charter
Why the movement exists, what it stands for, and what may never be changed to suit convenience. Everything else is read in its light.
The Constitution
The architecture: the clubs, the Nurture Centres, what it means to be an associate, how progress is measured and recognised, money, partnerships, youth protection, conduct — and how any of it may be changed.
The Bye-laws
The working law of the movement: membership and the life of an associate, youth protection, leadership and elections, councils, conduct and grievance, curriculum, and how clubs group together as they multiply.
The Code of Policies
Standing decisions of the Centre: recognition and awards, resources, finance and audit, growth, partnerships, and data, privacy and records.
The Manuals, Kits and Standard Operating Procedures
How the work is actually done — chartering a club, running a centre start to finish, teaching a class, onboarding a partner, keeping the books.
Nothing in this movement runs on precedent or on somebody’s recollection of what was agreed. Where a rule leaves a quantum open — an amount, a cadence, a limit — it is set centrally and published, and this site prints no number it has not been given.
What the written rules actually cover, and what you can read for yourself
Two of the manuals govern a Nurture Centre directly. The first is what is taught to the children and how: the daily session arc, the scholastic, dimension and competency strands mapped by age band, the Balasabha, the monthly initiative mapped to a UN Sustainable Development Goal, the trainer guide standard, and assessment by Ankur — reported as change and never as a grade. A module without a trainer guide is not delivered.
The second is how a centre is run, start to finish: where it may stand and how it is established, the centre-hosting agreement and its campus annexure, the session arc, the records a centre keeps, what reaches the Centre each month, safeguarding on the face of the manual, and money.
Where a manual and the youth-protection regime differ, youth protection governs. No operating instruction can lower a protection given to a child. How children are kept safe
The associate handbook, the public prospectus and the partner and donor pack are prepared for publication and appear on the documents page as each is released.
Three working roles, and one reserved word.
A club is self-governing. The people around it are there to advise, to protect and to observe — and the limits of each are written down, because a vague role becomes a powerful one.
Faculty Advisor
Appointed by the host college. Advises the club, supervises the secret ballot for the presidency with the Centre Mentors, and confirms the centre’s session record annually.
Centre Mentor
A screened safeguarding professional, not an associate, appointed by the Foundation — and the centre’s Youth Protection Officer. Up to eight per club. Legally load-bearing and non-negotiable.
Club Mentor
Observes and guides the associates in running their own club meetings. No decision-making — a process monitor, and nothing more.
Why the bare word “Mentor” is reserved, and what the Industry Panel is
The bare word “Mentor” means one thing in ARISE and one thing only: a privilege held at the higher Levels, by an associate who has climbed far enough to carry others. A class lead is not a mentor. A volunteer is not a mentor. The compound names — Centre Mentor, Club Mentor — are separate defined roles, and are always written in full so that nobody has to guess which is meant.
Beside a club stand the Faculty Advisor and the Centre Mentors, with the Foundation as arbiter where the two do not agree. Those are the people a parent or a principal deals with.
The Industry Panel is an optional club practice and not a constitutional body. A club may convene practitioners from its field to advise it. Nothing turns on whether it does, and the panel decides nothing.
A twenty-seat board, and a first year that earns it.
Every club is governed by a board of twenty. In the first year of a new club, nobody inherits a seat and nobody is appointed to one from above — the field is earned, and the whole body votes.
Associates are made
Candidates apply, complete the Associate Success Program, and become associates. The Nurture Centre Management Course is taken before anyone serves at a centre.
The club does its work
Associates set up the Nurture Centre, continue to learn and to earn, present ARISE to others, and onboard people onto the platform as Supporters. No donation is a criterion.
Rank is earned on three things together
Learning points accrued · hours served · people onboarded onto the ARISE community. The top three qualify for election.
All associates elect the President
By secret ballot, from those three, supervised by the Faculty Advisor and the Centre Mentors.
The President appoints, and the three allocate
The President chooses the Secretary and the Treasurer from the other two. The three then allocate the remaining portfolios together, the President holding the veto in case of disagreement.
Decisions in the first year, and what changes in the second
In the first year, the Faculty Advisor and the Centre Mentors facilitate. All associates contribute to activities and to decisions, and vote on decisions at the weekly meeting in the presence of the Faculty Advisor and the Centre Mentors.
From the second year, eligibility to contest is unchanged — learning, service and people onboarded — but the board monitors and conducts the process. The board makes the decisions, and the Faculty Advisor and the Centre Mentors take observer positions.
Offices align to the ARISE Year, 1 July to 30 June. The first boards take office on 1 July 2027. A club is constituted by twenty-five people and a host campus agreeing — the agreement creates the club and the charter registers it. Fifty is the target, and more is welcome.
Nobody pays, and no club holds a rupee.
The simplest protection against the thing that goes wrong in student organisations is to let no student organisation hold money. That is the rule here, and it has no exceptions.
Nobody pays
The membership fee is nil by rule, permanently. Children never pay, families never pay, colleges are charged nothing and partners pay nothing. The one carve-out is that celebrations are self-paid.
Clubs hold nothing
There is no club account, no float, no cash box and no collection. Every rupee sits in the central custody of the Rebuild India Foundation, is receipted, and is accounted for in books that are audited.
What giving funds
Charitable money is applied to the clubs, their Nurture Centres and the activities of those centres. The Foundation bears the cost of a centre — premises, materials, utilities, safety and first aid. Giving is open.
ARISE requests no payment on this site. No claim about tax deductibility is made anywhere on it. Where a giving form asks for a PAN, it is used for the receipt and for nothing else. Where the money sits, in full
The Professional Conduct Register, stated without euphemism.
“Unprofessional conduct is the deathblow to our system.” So there is a register, and it bites. It is also bounded — deliberately, and in writing.
| Entry | Consequence |
|---|---|
| First | Register entry, and points and the corresponding Levels reduced by 10% |
| Second | Register entry, and a reduction of 15% |
| Third | Register entry, and a reduction of 25% |
| Fourth | No earn opportunities and no privileges for two years |
Swipe the table sideways →
Association continues throughout, with learning alone. Nobody is put out of the movement by this register. And nothing earned is reversed — certifications, Honours and the record of what a person did stand. What moves is the standing figure; what is withdrawn is access.
How an entry expires, and the two hard limits
An entry expires at twelve months — twenty-four at the fourth. The reduction itself is not reversed on expiry; the entry simply ceases to be live.
No contact with a child is permitted during any period in which earn opportunities and privileges stand withdrawn.
The register never applies to a child. It records the professional conduct of associates and nothing else, and no child’s record ever enters it.
Membership itself is irrevocable. What may be withdrawn is access — to child contact, to office, to earn opportunities — never membership, and never anything earned. Permanent removal survives for the three gravest causes only, under the disciplinary process and its safeguards.
How a concern is raised, and who has to act on it.
Nothing in this movement obliges you to come to us first, and nothing in it can slow a report down. Every route below reaches a named person who is answerable for answering.
If a child may be at risk
Call Childline 1098 or the Police on 112. These are outside ARISE, they are free, and a child may use them too. Every centre publishes them and every parent is given them in writing.
If you have a grievance
The Grievance Officer receives grievances concerning a club or a Nurture Centre and answers them. Concerns about an officer, a Faculty Advisor or a trustee go to the Deputy Designated Safeguarding Officer and the Board Safeguarding Trustee instead, and the person concerned is not told.
If it is about your data
The Data Protection Contact answers first, and the Grievance Officer is the route if you are not satisfied. Neither route bars you from the Data Protection Board.
Nothing in the internal grievance process applies to any matter requiring report under POCSO, the Juvenile Justice Act or the POSH Act. No internal process, appeal, review or committee delays such a report by a single hour, and no officer, trustee, college or partner is asked for permission before it is made. A person who reports in good faith incurs no liability and suffers no detriment in this movement.
The rest of the back-of-house.
Governance is one of five pages that carry the serious commitments of this movement.