Sambhav Foundation

Foundation to Help People to Help Themselves.

Background and the Rationalization of the project:

The project Home Placement is the major activity that SAMBHAV FOUNDATION had actively run with the collaboration of SATHI. The detail of the project is as follows…

 

SAMBHAV FOUNDATION is actively involved in rehabilitation of children found working in railway platforms. These children would have run away or left their homes for a variety of reasons ranging from sheer poverty at home, ill-treatment by step parents or other relatives, fights, quarrels or problems at school, or other similar trivial reasons. There are also a few who have been attracted by the novelty factor associated with larger cities.

 

Once these children hit the platform circuit and gang up with other children, they tend to fall into a vicious circle of adverse circumstances. They are hounded by the police, roughed up and otherwise abused by older kids and other unseemly characters, risk starvation, bad food, exposure to various diseases, become addicted to different drugs, start begging, eating leftovers from rubbish bins, and develop criminal and anti social tendencies.

 

The attitude of the general public toward such children is of mistrust; that these children are criminals, orphans or destitute; and the children are largely ignored in the bustle of daily life. When left to fend for themselves in such adverse circumstances, the future of these children turns out to be bleak.

The numbers involved are quite alarming. An informal survey done by the NGO SATHI in the year 2000-2001showed that around 4000 children landed up in Mumbai Central railway station alone. There are many, many more; in other big cities; living in bus terminals, railway platforms and the like. The heartening part is that there are numerous organizations working toward helping these children.

 

In Mumbai for e.g. there are 13 NGOs, in Bangalore around 25 NGOs, and in Pune there are 2 NGO’s that are putting in their efforts towards helping these children to create a better life for themselves.

 

However, most of the organizations working with such children underplay the importance of relocating the children back to their parents. One reason for this could be the fact that there are children who cannot be relocated home if their interests were taken into consideration, because they would be exploited again once they went back.

 

So there is a need for institutions that provide shelter, education and skill training for such children.

It was also seen that majority of the children feared going back home as they were afraid of their parents wrath. They would have left on an impulse or over some trivial issue; but once they are on the platform; the longer the duration they are away from home, the more is their fear of returning back home.  They would have developed strong bonds with their peer group on the platforms and would also have a favorable attitude regarding the life they were leading on the platform. These factors further prevent them from making the move to return home by themselves.

It is regrettable that very few of the organizations regard home placement as top priority. They provide shelter, food, education, skill training but neglect contacting the families and replacing the child back home. More often than other, the rationale is that the child left home due to some difficulties and placing the child back to a same situation would only make the child run away again. This thinking is in contrast with the figures that show that an overwhelmingly large percentage of the children are welcome back home.

Principles of Home Placement Project:

The Project Home Placement has developed from certain beliefs and principles that SAMBHAV FOUNDATION holds.

 

  1.  Family is the best place for the child. The family atmosphere is important for the child’s development. Poverty may be one of the reasons for leaving home; or it could be the influence of peers, or the ill treatment meted out to the child. In most of the cases, it is lack of understanding and lack of guidance from the parents, probably due to their ignorance rather than lack of caring or cruelty, which has created the problem at home.

 

  1. Most of the time children would have left home over trivial reasons and remained away (or feared to go back) because they anticipated parent’s anger. They need to be helped to overcome this block.

 

  1. The children would have picked up certain habits and addictions that also stand against their immediate relocation. SAMBHAV FOUNDATION believes that the children can be weaned off these habits and attitudes in a gradual manner.

 

A child is a child. A child will respond to affections of the family. Children will respond to relations they develop with other members of the family. A child needs it's own family to relate to.

OBJECTIVES:

So the objectives of the Home Placement Project can be listed as…

  1. To return the runaway children to their home by proper counseling and managing family problems.
  2. To provide required and necessary assistance to the children.
  3. To relief the children from addiction.
  4. To change the behavior and attitude of the children of street life.

The general perception of the government, public and other institutions is that children on railway stations are either orphans, or from families engaged in begging or involved in criminal activities. By implementing the Project Home Placement with the above objectives, SAMBHAV FOUNDATION  is trying to change this existing perception about runaway children.

AREAS OF WORK:

The project is going on the Railway Station and Terminus areas.  We have identified the CST area for the work. The observation and statistics says that daily four to seven new children come at this terminus. So we can catch those and do the home placement. Also one staff will go at other terminuses at Kurla, Mumbai Central, Bandra and Dadar and identify the runaway children.

Our Achievements:

In this duration, we were able to achieve …

1.      As shown in the chart we managed to contact 943 children and able to help 549 children during the period by repatriating or institutionalizing as per their needs.

2.      Able to conduct three ‘De-addiction and Home Orientation Camps’ (2 boys and 1 girl camp) successfully.

3.      Able to conduct various events like Diwali Festival, Medical Camps for the children in collaboration with NGO Sneha, Fresh Children Survey at CST station, get together with children, participation in INDO-PAK events, Save The Children events etc.

4.      Able to build healthy and helpful relation with the organization working on same issue and other than the issue, government bodies like police, RPF, GRP, municipal corporate people, hospitals, funders and donors etc.

5.      Able to establish the project by developing new ideas, strategies, proper planning and managing the project activities.

6.      Able to attract the media (Print as well as electronic) so as to note the activities of the organization and create the awareness about the children issue.

7.    Able to develop the documentation like monthly report, quarterly report, annual report, camp reports, survey report etc.