Girish Mehta

Girish, a care leaver himself, is building India’s first peer-led aftercare ecosystem to ensure that no young person exits the childcare system into a void, isolation, or invisibility, as is predominantly the case today. Through Care Leavers Inner Circle (CLiC), he has created a community-driven model that guarantees identity, shelter, support, and leadership for and by care leavers. His approach is transforming how Indian states—and increasingly, neighboring countries—respond to the needs of these abandoned, vulnerable youth.

Girish Mehta’s breakthrough idea is to put care leavers in charge of their own futures—by building India’s first peer-led aftercare ecosystem. With CLiC (Care Leavers Inner Circle), he is redefining aftercare as a right—not a favor—by shifting the center of gravity from external aid to peer-powered support. For the first time, young people exiting institutional care are surrounded by a national network of others like them—care leavers supporting care leavers.

Children who are orphaned, separated from families, rescued, born in prisons, or placed in government institutions grow up in Child Care Institutions (CCIs) until they turn 18. At that point, they legally become adults and must leave the system—becoming “care leavers.” Most face this transition alone, with no ID, address, or support. Having grown up in this caregiving system himself, Girish saw the need for a structured, rights-based, and peer-led aftercare response.

He founded CLiC—a platform that gives care leavers identity, access, and agency, and is run by the community itself. Some of the support it provides is around address proof, temporary shelter, emotional and psychological support, jobs, training, and lifelong community. By centering peer-to-peer influence, Girish transforms care leavers from passive recipients into confident, connected citizens who support, mentor, and lead each other through transition.

The immediate change is visibility and preparation: young people aged 16–18 are made aware of their rights, connected to schemes, and prepared for exit through a peer-informed lens. Between 18–30, they are welcomed into the care leaver community, offered tangible support, and surrounded by others who’ve walked the same path.

At a country level, Girish has worked with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to shift how the country and then individual states view this transition—embedding peer-led support into policy and practice. Due to CLiC’s efforts, eight states now recognise care leavers and provide support through timely documents, housing, education access, and job opportunities the moment they exit care. His team has even traced and reconnected youth who had previously fallen through the system, creating India’s first comprehensive care leaver database.

The database he has developed—previously non-existent—is now used by civil society and state agencies to reach the most vulnerable youth and helps states to learn to start developing their own databases as well. Long-term, governments are beginning to formally recognize the peer-led community built by Girish as the official care leaver network in several states and union territories.
At its heart, Girish’s model replaces isolation with a peer-powered sense of belonging. CLiC functions like a chosen family: a network of support, shared wisdom, and collective action. It ensures that no young person is left alone at 18—and that every care leaver has not only a safety net, but a community they help build.

Imagine turning 18 and being told to leave the only home you've ever known—a childcare institution—with no ID, no address, no family, no job, and no community to rely on. This is not fiction—it is the harsh reality for thousands of young people in India who “age out” of orphanages, care homes, and juvenile institutions every year. A UNICEF study estimates that 30 million children in India are orphaned or abandoned, with nearly 0.5 million living in institutional care. Known as care leavers, these youth are thrust into adulthood overnight, expected to survive—and thrive—without the most basic tools society is expected to provide to its own children.

The gaps are staggering. Most care leavers exit without essential identity documents—like PAN cards (National Financial ID card), voter IDs, or proof of residence—cutting them off from education, jobs, healthcare, housing, and welfare entitlements. A 2021 survey found that 40% had no proof of residence, 64% lacked voter cards, and 54% were without PAN cards. This isn’t just an administrative gap—it’s institutionalized invisibility.

Emotionally and socially isolated, these young adults carry deep trauma, compounded by the stigma of having grown up without families. They are 25% more likely to be involved in crime as compared to the general population. Among young people aged 18 to 21 in the criminal justice system, 23% spent all or part of their childhood in institutional care. A government investigation in India revealed that thousands of children and young people were also victims of sexual abuse, and pornography. Without alternatives and support, care leavers are pushed into a dangerous spiral of homelessness, trafficking, abuse, low-wage labor, and exploitation.

Yet, no national system exists to track care leavers or support their transition into adulthood. A 2018 nationwide review by the Ministry of Women and Child Development reported over 370,000 children in need of care and protection, and 7,422 children in conflict with the law living in CCIs. But once these children turn 18, the state’s duty effectively ends. Despite the Juvenile Justice Act mandating aftercare support for youth aged 18–21, most states neither fund nor implement such programs—because aftercare is non-compulsory and unenforced.

The few civil society efforts that do exist remain fragmented, short-term, and under-resourced. There is no centralized database, no coordinated service delivery, and no shared accountability across government agencies. As a result, even where entitlements exist, care leavers are unable to access them—blocked by legal, informational, and systemic barriers.

To make matters worse, India is rapidly moving toward deinstitutionalization. Under the GHAR (Go Home and Re-Unite) initiative by the NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights), states are working to reintegrate children back into families, often without adequate assessment or support. While well-intentioned, this approach risks pushing children back into the very conditions—poverty, abuse, neglect—that led to institutionalization in the first place. With adoption rates as low as 0.01%, and family-based alternatives still underdeveloped, this shift has increased the number of missing and runaway children. Officers in state child protection bodies have publicly warned that these transitions, when unplanned, lead to heightened vulnerability to abuse and exploitation.

Surveys show that 40% of care leavers struggle to complete education, 61% report recurring mental health challenges, and over half remain unemployed. Yet, when care leavers receive basic support—vocational training, access to ID, community—they thrive. 93% of those supported retain jobs and achieve financial stability. The problem isn’t the young people—it’s the system that fails them.

Girish, a care leaver himself, experienced this abandonment firsthand. What struck him most was not just the absence of services—but the absence of solidarity, visibility, and structure. There was no nationwide framework, no peer community, no institutional response designed to accompany care leavers into adulthood.

Recognizing this vacuum, Girish saw the need for a new system entirely—one that reimagines aftercare not as charity, but as a right. One that transitions care leavers from passive recipients of aid to confident, connected citizens. He began building India’s first structured, scalable, and rights-based aftercare ecosystem—anchored in legal identity, peer solidarity, government integration, and access to resources. His approach is not about filling gaps—it's about changing the system that creates those gaps in the first place. Because what care leavers need is not just support—but a new social contract.

Girish is building India’s first peer-led, government-recognized, and technology-enabled national ecosystem for care leavers—young people transitioning out of institutional care. His strategy is rooted in his belief that aftercare is not rehabilitation, but a right. By making identity, support systems, and opportunities legally guaranteed for every care leaver, Girish is fundamentally transforming the way Indian society and government perceive a young adult’s transition out of institutional care—from one of abandonment to one of empowerment and continuity.

In 2021, Girish founded the Care Leavers Inner Circle (CLiC) Forum to build the ecosystem he never had. The model is grounded in his lived experience as a care leaver and begins by addressing the most urgent and foundational need: Identity. Without proof of address or government-issued documents, care leavers are invisible to the systems that determine access to housing, healthcare, education, employment, and welfare. Girish recognized that identity is the first barrier, and solving it unlocks everything else in a sequence. Through CLiC, thousands of care leavers have been directly supported in obtaining address proof and ID documentation, often for the first time in their lives.

But Girish’s model goes far beyond identity. CLiC’s peer-to-peer support provides other services such as temporary shelter for care leavers upon exit from institutions, ensuring that homelessness does not become their first experience of adulthood. Recognizing the multi-dimensional vulnerabilities care leavers face, he created a structured seven-module aftercare support plan that provides an integrated continuum of care. This includes securing 1) legal identity, 2) providing psychological support, 3) skill development, 4) community support, 5) emergency financial support, 6) helpline for care leavers to reach out and to get connected with important government schemes and support, and 7) capacity building to equip care leavers to support other care leavers who have not received this support yet. Together, these modules form an integrated continuum of care that not only addresses the immediate vulnerabilities of youth exiting institutional care but also builds their long-term resilience, leadership, and social mobility.

At every level, CLiC is careleaver-led. All facilitators and team members are care leavers themselves—a deliberate design choice by Girish to ensure authenticity, trust, and deep understanding of care leaver realities. This peer-led architecture is both the moral core and operational strength of the model. This model is designed to meet both immediate needs and long-term goals. By activating care leavers not just as beneficiaries but as peer supporters and changemakers, Girish is transforming care from a top-down intervention into a collaborative, self-sustaining network. CLiC pre-emptively includes young people into the database of care leavers before they exit the care centres and enrol them into a community that guarantees ongoing support. Care Leavers are enrolled onto CLiC and they receive an Inner Circle Card, officially recognized by state governments, which provides access to a full suite of aftercare services through CLiC's technology platform, DHRUVA and their Helpline- India’s first helpline number specifically for care leavers.

Beyond the community support given to children currently residing in care centers or preparing to become a care leaver, Girish is focusing on extending support to children who have prematurely left the care systems due to de-institutionalization or re-integration with families. Often care leavers integrated with families face the same vulnerabilities that put them in the care system in the first place but are not officially part of the care system anymore and fall through the cracks. To extend support to such children, Girish launched the concept of Captains: district-level volunteers who are care leavers themselves and connect vulnerable children and care leavers with the CLiC community. On average, each of these Captains has been able to bring together 50-60 care leavers, and get them support in terms of legal identities, accommodations, and jobs. Captains have been pivotal in setting up district-level communities of CLiC, organizing regular meetups, and becoming the main link between CLiC and the communities, helping to spread Girish's idea to the district and panchayat levels. Captains are Girish’s way of ensuring fast scale and replicability at the grassroots level.

With the demonstrated effectiveness of a structured, peer-led aftercare model, Girish realized it was important to leverage the network and resources of the government to solve the problem at scale. Having built the country’s first structured, successful peer-led model for aftercare, Girish directly approached the Ministry of Women and Child Development with policy recommendations to strengthen the country's aftercare system. His efforts contributed to key amendments in the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act in 2021 and 2022, which for the first time mandated structured aftercare support for all care leavers between the ages of 18 and 21. These amendments also addressed the long-standing challenge of legal identity for care leavers by making documentation a legal requirement at the point of exit from care. Following this policy breakthrough, CLiC was also formally recognized by the Government of India as an official partner. The government, on one hand, is learning from CLiC but also recognizes CLiC to maintain the verified national database of care leavers, a powerful endorsement of Girish’s strategy. CLiC network now works closely with District Child Protection Units (DCPUs), Child Welfare Committees (CWCs), and local NGOs to identify, track, and support care leavers—especially those who were left out of the system before the policy was reformed.

Girish created a structured model where one did not exist before. As a result, the entire landscape for care leavers in India is changing. Systemic change created by Girish has ensured that care leavers are no longer invisible in India’s legal and social systems. They now exit institutions with documentation, temporary shelter, and pathways to education and employment. For the individual care leaver, the immediate effect is security, identity, and hope. In the long-term, Girish has secured the system to give care leaver youth the ability to build independent, empowered lives.

As of 2025, CLiC has directly supported over half a million care leavers, and Girish’s work has indirectly impacted the entire population of care leavers exiting institutional care in India each year. At the state level, CLiC community also links youth to state specific programs and government schemes such as Mission Vatsalya, Samarth Yojana in Rajasthan, and other state-specific services for persons with disabilities and HIV+ individuals. Apart from state governments, CLiC also partners with UNICEF, semi-government bodies and 30+ partner organizations to mobilize resources for care leavers. CLiC also works with skilling partners like Haldiram Skill Academy to ensure their future is secure beyond care homes. Additionally, through CLiC’s programs like Super 30 and FAB 15, care leavers get scholarships, digital skills, and continuous learning opportunities; ensuring care leavers don’t just survive- they thrive.

Most recently and to operationalize this vision at scale, Girish and his team also built DHRUVA, a technology platform and mobile application that serves as India’s first digital infrastructure for aftercare. Care Leavers are enrolled onto the DHRUVA platform before they exit care and receive a state-recognized Inner Circle Card that acts as a gateway to aftercare services. Through DHRUVA, they can access a full suite of support—job placements, skill training, continued education, health services, rights awareness, scholarships, and connections to government schemes. To date, hundreds of care leavers have secured legal identities through DHRUVA, and hundreds more have benefited from other peer offered services such as housing, job support, and financial assistance. DHRUVA is complemented by CLiC’s Helpline, India’s first dedicated support line for care leavers. The helpline provides not only information and navigation support but also direct access to counseling, mentorship, and emergency services. For instance, over 500 care leavers have received mental health counseling through the helpline, a critical intervention in preventing crises and restoring dignity.

Girish has transformed the lives of many young people across the country, who are otherwise highly marginalized and virtually invisible. Among many individuals whose dignity was preserved through Girish’s work, Savita, a lost child and living in a care home from the age of 5, transitioned out of care institutions when she turned 18 and found herself forced into a marriage against her will and ended up being tortured and sexually harassed. When CLiC traced her through the Helpline and brought her back into the community, she was given immediate legal assistance, counselling and support to complete her education and secure a job to live independently. Partially visually impaired, his family abandoned Sandeep, and he was never given the right support to complete his education. When Sandeep entered a low paying job as a security guard, his disability came in his way, and he felt alienated by society. At the brink of a mental breakdown and risk of losing his job, CLiC found him and gave him mental health counselling, connected him with vocational training and secured him a well-paying job in the pharmaceutical industry. As of 2025, Girish and his team at CLiC intervene at the early stages of transition of a young care leaver, making sure support is not delayed or denied for a Savita or Sandeep in the future.

Girish now envisions embedding the CLiC model into India’s national child protection framework, fully aligned with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and national youth development policies. He is tirelessly working to expand adoption of the DHRUVA app as a national digital infrastructure for aftercare and is designing training programs for government stakeholders to implement aftercare policies effectively. A district-level care leaver tracking system is also underway, ensuring no youth are lost in the gaps between systems.

Ultimately, Girish is building a distributed, care leaver-led movement—a self-sustaining ecosystem where youth who once needed support now lead the transformation for others. He is not just shifting outcomes for individual care leavers but redefining how India sees and supports some of its most vulnerable citizens—ensuring they transition into adulthood not with fear and abandonment, but with agency, dignity, and opportunity.

Girish Mehta has emerged as one of the promising social impact leader, care leaver, and founder of India’s first peer-led, national aftercare ecosystem for young people transitioning out of institutional care. His work is deeply personal.

Raised in a childcare institution in Jaipur, Girish grew up with a dream of joining the Indian Army—a vision of purpose, discipline, and dignity. But like many youth who exit the childcare system, he was confronted by the harsh reality of life after care: no home, no identity documents, no support network, and no clear pathway to pursue his aspirations. The weight of survival pushed his dreams aside. To make ends meet, Girish took up short-term jobs in hotels—working long hours to earn a livelihood while trying to piece together a life from scratch.

When he eventually secured a stable job, Girish began quietly supporting other care leavers, using his limited income to help them navigate the same struggles he once faced. His early instincts as a changemaker came into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he created a WhatsApp group to connect 80 care leavers—sharing resources, emotional support, and solidarity. This informal collective sparked a powerful realization: care leavers didn’t need charity; they needed each other—and a structured system built on their lived experience.

In 2021, Girish mobilized a core team of care leavers and launched CLiC (Care Leavers' Community)—India’s first peer-led, structured, and government-recognized aftercare ecosystem. CLiC redefines care leavers not as passive recipients of aid but as active agents of change. The initiative provides legal identity support, crisis response, mentorship, mental health resources, skills development, and access to entitlements—all anchored in peer leadership and community-based support.

Before founding CLiC, Girish worked with Childline 1098, India’s national child emergency helpline. There, he witnessed the rescue and rehabilitation of abandoned and trafficked children and infants, gaining a systemic lens on child protection and firsthand insight into how much of the care system remains broken. This experience sharpened his skills in resource mapping, crisis intervention, and policy advocacy, while reinforcing his commitment to transforming the system from within.

He also worked with Udayan Care, one of India’s leading child and youth welfare organizations, where he strengthened his understanding of aftercare services and youth-led programming.

Girish’s journey is inseparable from the system he has set out to change. His lived experience fuels his entrepreneurial drive and his belief that no young person should have to walk the path alone. Within a short span, CLiC has grown into a national platform, collaborating with state governments, NGOs, and funders to institutionalize aftercare as a right.

His vision is bold and urgent: a world where every care leaver is seen, supported, and empowered to thrive. His work has earned recognition and support from UNICEF, Azim Premji Foundation, The/Nudge Institute, and NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore. In 2025, he was named Best Director of a Social Impact Startup (Under 30) by the Bombay Stock Exchange.

For Girish, every milestone is a step toward rewriting the story of care in India—from one of abandonment to one of belonging.