PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN SOIR-IM AND KIRAN SOCIETY VARANASI

It was in the early 1990s that I got introduced by Ms Agnes Kunze, who was the founder of KKM in Dehradun, to the Regional Office of SOIR-IM at Rajpur. So happy I was to meet there with Mrs and Mr BRITTA and JOHN FENNEBERG, the founder couple of SOIR-IM. It was not long after that, they kindly came down to Varanasi to visit our KIRAN Village.

Our first official interaction consisted in exchange of crafts made by the KIRAN youngsters. IM was interested to purchase from us and to sell them in their shop in their Head Office in Lund, Sweden. Our bonds were strengthened through a visit in Lund by the president and the founder of KIRAN, Dr.Amod Prakash and Sangeeta J.K.

From 2011 onwards, SOIR-IM accepted to support three year projects, at first for “Mainstreeaming of children with disability & marginalized girls through inclusive education”.

A next project was supported on “Awareness Creation, Advocacy and Networking”, especially in our CBR field. It was then followed up again in 2019 with enlarged Advocacy activities.

In the year 2018 we were lucky to receive support for holding a workshop for our Management team on “Organizational Capacity Development”

In the following year a STATE LEVEL SEMINAR ON RIGHTS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITY was also supported by SOIR-IM.

Our experience with SOIR-IM has been a very great chance for learning, through intensive interaction with the project coordinator. Their focus on girl child, on Advocacy, on right for inclusion of the marginalized children, has been a constant guide for us.

We are deeply grateful for this enriching partnership with SOIR-IM and we cherish this link as a shining star in the sky of KIRAN’s Adventure of Trust.