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Mummy for 400 children, Smiles work as strength for Anjana

26 years back, Anjana Rajagopal decided to start an organisation, called ‘Sai Kripa’ which could create a lasting change in the lives of homeless children regardless of religion, caste, race, ethnicity or gender.

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Anjana with her big family in front of the place where the children live.
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Disturbed by the sight of children being exploited all around, Anjana decided to start a home with the name ‘Bal Kutir’ for the unwanted children, a place where the children will just not get shelter, clothing and food but will also feel secure and can shape their future.

On March 1990, on her way back home, Anjana saw a 9-year-old disabled child being thrashed ruthlessly by a fruit vendor near ITO. Upon inquiry she found the child belongs to no one and Anjana brought him home. That was the day Anjana became a mother. She named him Rajat, and he was the first child in her shelter home.

Rajat, now 34-years old, suffers from hearing disability. He has mastered carpentry skills and earns by working with Sai Kripa, NGO started by Anjana for the homeless children. The journey of 61-year-old Anjana had not been an easy one. She quit her job as a journalist when she started getting more children and then devoted all her life in making the life better for these children. “There has been a time, when there was just 500 bucks in the account but we surpassed all those hurdles. Now people help and support us in their own possible ways,” says Anjana.

Some of the children in the shelter home have been picked up from roads while others from slums and some the police has brought in. When it is about a girl in her home, Anjana knows she has an added responsibility right until their marriage. Meera was brought to Sai Kripa when she was 10 by its volunteers; today she is married and has a child of her own. For the children in the shelter home, and for many in school, she is their mother and for the younger and the newborns she is their grandmother, but everyone calls her, ‘Mummy.’

In 1991, Anjana started an English Medium school in the Wazidpur Village in Sector-134 Noida. “Since village children also needed a school so I started a school with the name, Sai Shiksha Sansthan in Wazidpur. In the school, children from the village and from our Sai Kripa home study,” shares Anjana. The school, which was started with just 80 children, has more than 400 children now. So far fifteen batches have completed their 10th standard from the school. So what keeps her going, she was swift with her reply, “Smiles that I see on their faces is my source of strength.”

For the longer version of this report, click here

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