About the Centre
An institution built around the family
Chavara Family Welfare Centre is a family apostolate of the CMI Fathers, working from Kochi since 1996. Everything we do begins with one conviction — that a household founded on trust is the surest good a society can build.
Who we are
A centre, serving families since 1996
The Centre functions under Chavara Cultural Centre, Kochi, and is founded and managed by the CMI Fathers. We are not a broker and we do not work on commission. Families come to us for help in a decision that will shape the rest of a young person's life, and that responsibility is treated as pastoral work rather than as a transaction.
Over three decades the Centre has grown from a single room in Kochi into a network of offices across Kerala and the major Indian cities, with more than 4,00,000 families served in India and abroad. What has not changed is the method — a person you can sit across from, a record kept honestly, and a follow-up that continues long after the wedding day.
- No middlemen, no commission
- Guidance by CMI Fathers
- Details verified before listing
- Family welfare seminars
Our roots
A vision that is older than the Centre
St. Kuriakose Elias Chavara taught that a good family is heaven on earth. The institutions that carry his name were built to make that ordinary and achievable for ordinary households.
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1805 – 1871
St. Kuriakose Elias Chavara
Priest, reformer and co-founder of the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate. He opened schools alongside churches so that learning would not be the privilege of one community, and he wrote to families directly about how a Christian home should be conducted. Canonised in 2014, his teaching on the household remains the working brief of this Centre.
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1971
Chavara Cultural Centre, Kochi
Established by the CMI congregation in the centenary year of St. Chavara's death, the Cultural Centre grew into a hub for education, the arts, inter-religious dialogue and social service in Cochin. Chavara Family Welfare Centre is one of its wings.
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1996
The Family Welfare Centre begins
The Centre was opened to answer a plain need — families looking for a trustworthy way to find a suitable alliance, without agents, inflated claims or hidden payments. It began with a modest register, a telephone and the motto that still stands: service to God through service to man and nature.
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Since 2000
Offices, seminars and gatherings
As demand grew beyond Kochi, regional offices opened across Kerala and in Bangalore, Coimbatore, Delhi and Mumbai. Alongside the register came family welfare seminars, the Chavara Family Meet and the Chavara Family News and Photo Directory.
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Today
The thirtieth year
The Centre now maintains a database of over 10,00,000 potential and prospective candidates, refreshed quarterly, and serves families of every Christian denomination in Kerala and across the diaspora. Registration schemes were extended to include persons with disabilities and candidates who come to us later in life, so that no one is quietly left out.
What guides us
Five commitments we do not trade away
Ethics first
We are against commission-based matchmaking and the role of middlemen in marriage. Our charges are published, one-time and the same for everyone who walks through the door.
Families, not profiles
A marriage joins two households. Parents are welcome in every conversation, and our staff are trained to speak to the family as much as to the candidate.
Discretion
Personal details are verified against identity proof and then held carefully. Nothing is released to another family without the candidate's consent, and records are never sold on.
Open to every denomination
Syro-Malabar, Latin, Syro-Malankara, Knanaya, Jacobite, Orthodox, Marthoma, CSI and Pentecostal families all use the Centre. We serve them without preference and without pressure to look outside their own tradition — or within it.
Nobody left behind
Candidates with disabilities, those marrying later in life, and those beginning again after loss or separation are served with the same care — and, in the case of candidates with special needs, without charge.
How the Centre is run
Priests, professionals and a public office
The Centre is directed by a CMI priest appointed by the congregation, supported by an assistant director and an executive director who runs day-to-day operations. Each regional office is staffed by a manager and trained executives who meet families in person, take down details, verify documents and follow up on introductions.
Staff are trained in-house before they meet a client, and the Centre has long applied total quality management to its own work — measuring not the number of registrations taken but the number of families settled and the quality of the service they remember afterwards.
Accountability
- Every candidate's identity proof is collected and checked before a record is activated.
- Charges are one-time and disclosed in advance; there is no success fee, and no payment is ever taken by a staff member in a private capacity.
- Complaints and corrections can be raised at any office or at the head office in Kochi, and are answered during working hours.
- Our services are strictly for marriage purposes. The Centre is not a dating service and does not operate as one.