The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Madurai News : Emergency shelters for stray children opened

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 11, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Madurai

Emergency shelters for stray children opened

By Our Staff Reporter

MADURAI, FEB. 10. In an attempt to provide an immediate asylum to runaway children and reunite them with their parents, Nanban, a non-governmental organisation, opened a Nanban Transit Centre here on Saturday.

The centre (also called emergency shelters) for children is meant for straying, missing and abandoned children in distress on the streets, encountered by the Nanban street educators or referred to the NGO by police outposts.

The centre offers basic facilities such as food, bed, toilet, washing clothes and opportunities for relaxation and recuperation.

"The necessity to open this centre is to help these children understand reality and reunite them with their parents or guardians. It is not easy to take them straight away to homes run by the Nanban, for that would be inconvenient both for the children and inmates. Hence we decided to open this centre nearer to the bus stand," said S. James, founder-secretary, Nanban.

The children's immediate needs are addressed and counselling is also provided at the centre. A child's stay at the centre would be for a few hours or overnight or up to a week's time. Only in cases where reconciliation or reunion between a child and its parents/guardian failed to materialise, or where the identity of the parent/guardian could not be traced or no one existed, alternative placements were offered to children for their development in ways they felt conducive for them to merge with the mainstream of society in due course.

The street educators would visit places frequented by runaway children and street kids, such as bus stands, railway station, main business areas, temples, etc. They would make friends with the kids and bring them to the Centre. After locating the parents they would counsel the parents and the child would be reunited. Nothing would be insisted upon the child and it would be given freedom of choice, Mr. James said.

For many of the Nanban's child intervention programmes, the Centre would serve as the base camp, which would provide first aid to the harassed runaway children before other relief could be identified, he said.

Arne Aaen of Denmark, a keen supporter of child welfare, inaugurated the centre.

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