www.salaambaalaktrust.com
It is the post-lunch TV hour at Arushi and the mood among the girls who live here is buoyant. When a television actor (Rajat Tokas) appears on screen, I am taken aback by the dozen-odd flying kisses thrown at him by my fellow viewers. The conversation veers quickly towards who adores whom.
“Please write that Sapna loves Salman!” says Sapna.
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“And that Himesh is Pooja’s favourite!” pleads Pooja.
“Asha here prays for Rajat Tokas all the time!” says a girl—not Asha—with a giggle. Asha turns slightly red, then smiles and looks accusingly at the girl who has volunteered this information.
Just five months old, Arushi, which houses 47 girls, is the fifth shelter home for children opened by the Delhi-based NGO, Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT). Over the past 20 years, SBT has provided a home, education and future to many street children in Delhi.
Tucked away among a row of houses in a pleasant residential Gurgaon colony that is still in the process of shedding its rural vestiges, Arushi houses girls aged between five and 18. These girls either don’t have families or their families are too poor to take care of them and have left them here.
The home reminds you of a clean and well-maintained, if somewhat spartan, students’ hostel. Its spacious dorm-style rooms, built over three levels around an atrium with a sunroof, are neatly ordered and have bunk beds. There is a dining area on the ground floor which also serves as a common room. Classrooms, an amphitheatre and a TV room are being built in the basement. If Arushi’s unplastered and unpainted walls indicate that budgets were tight, then their patterned red brick and (polished) concrete finish also shows that the aesthetics of the building has been thought through.
Plaques on the walls show that funding for Arushi came from corporations, both Indian and multinationals, as well as from the American and Japanese governments—a testimony to the confidence and trust SBT’s work inspires.
The future is here: The children have full-time teachers to help with their studies. Harikrishna Katragadda /Mint
Cheddi Rai, who has worked as a teacher with SBT for six years, gives his list of all that the NGO provides its young wards: “Health, education, psycho-social support, meals, snacks, clothing, morning breakfast.” Children in all the five shelters are enrolled in schools; those who are too weak academically to attend one are taught at the shelters by teachers such as Rai and are enrolled in government open-schooling programmes. There are caretakers and tutors to help out with the homework.
All of which does not obviate the need for volunteers to give a leg up to the young wards of Arushi in what remains an uphill struggle for a decent future.