Welcome to Ian Forber-Pratt's Website...

Hi everyone,

Per the request of some friends, I'm going to start documenting my journey to start a foster care system in North India.

Where do I start?

As a general goal, helping children in India has been a passion of mine for years. I tossed around ideas of starting an orphanage in India, starting a school and working with children is all different capacities in India. From 2007 to 2010 I traveled to India three times, each exposing myself to different aspects of child welfare. Concurrently, as life unfolded I found myself working in/ and passionate about foster care here in the United States. I finished my MSW and began to feel curious about what foster care looked like in India.

As I let the idea settle in my mind I decided that foster care might be a needed thing in India. But who am I to assess what is 'needed' in India? So I turned to existing programs. As I started to communicate with people in India they assured me that foster care provided children the informal education that gives life skills and cultural competency that they do not receive in institutions. So yes, good, some people think foster care is needed in India. However, how do I translate that into a working model?

So here are my initial steps for the next 6 months:

Communicate with key people in India who are working in foster care
Write a comprehensive business plan to start a model of foster care in Udaipur.
Schedule meetings with key people while I'm in India in November 2010.
Learn Hindi in preparation for an intermediate full AIIS immersion class.

I'll keep working on this for years to come. I need to be patient, dedicated, calculated and flexible,

This is totally an achievable goal and hopefully this initial entry will be the first of hundreds that show a road map to how I helped to create a sustainable foster care system in North india.

My hope is that I create a test model of foster care in Udaipur.

I want to call the project Care Udaipur. Who knows if this name will stick, but it sounds good for now.

Please please ask any questions.
Thank you for reading,
Ian