INDIA BEATS
On the wings of hope
VENUS VINOD UPADHAYAYA
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An SOS village in Mulayam, Kerala, proves that through emotional support and care destitute children can get ahead in life.
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Photo: Venus Vinod Upadhayaya
Boundless joy: Children at the SOS village treating themselves to a shower.
Bindu was two years old when her family abandoned her. She was a bundle of bones. But her life changed after the SOS village at Mulayam in Thrissur took her under its wing. Twenty-one years later, she works as a software engineer in Bangalore.
The SOS village in Mulayam has proved that destitute children and orphans can be raised to be bright individuals if they are given a mother and a home to grow in. Since its establishment in 1983, this SOS village has given about 500 children a healthy upbringing and helped them reintegrate with mainstream society. About 180 of them are well-placed and the rest are studying in schools and colleges around the country.
Long-term care
N. Girijavallabhan, who is in charge of the village, explains, “Under our long-term care programme, destitute children and orphans live in families. Each family in the SOS village has a home and the “mother” brings up children the way they are brought up in a normal family. We make sure they grow up like normal children and in no way feel alienated from society. These children study in schools across the town.”
Boys stay in the village till the age of 14 and then are shifted to SOS youth homes. Girls remain under direct care till they pass class XII. Both boys and girls, according to their interests and inclinations, are sent for higher education.
Time of celebration
After the children complete their education and decide to marry, the village helps them with the needful. It also gets support in organising marriages of its inmates from a marriage cell at its national co-ordination office in Delhi.
Marriages are a time of celebration and every family in this village treasures the marriage albums of their brothers and sisters.
There are 17 homes in this SOS village and each home has a mother. The mother builds a close relationship with every child entrusted to her, and provides the security, love and stability that each child needs. As a child-care professional, she lives together with the children, guides their development, and runs her household independently.
So much so, these inmates and their homes get the name of the mother. The mother is of the same religion as her children and the home follows all rituals and ways of worship that they are entitled to. This maintains the religious identity of the child.
Every home in the village thus has its own unique feeling, rhythm and routine. Under its roof, children enjoy a real sense of security and belonging. They grow and learn together, sharing responsibilities and all the joys and sorrows of daily life.
“Thrikkukaran home” mother Annie Thrikkukaran has been in the village since its inception. She has brought up 31 children so far. Of them, seven have got married. Annie has never felt they are not her own children. She has even bought ornaments for them from her savings. She is proud of them and feels happy whenever they call on her. “The bond between the children is strong,” she says.
Lifetime ties
This family approach to the long-term care of orphaned and abandoned children has built emotional ties that seem to last a lifetime.
Even after getting married many of the children, along with their families, visit their mother and home in the village during vacations and festivals.
The inmates of this village have become scholars, dancers, musicians, animators, scientist and sportspersons. “An inmate got a scholarship to study e-math in Norway and another one studied animation in Scotland. Four others have won a scholarship by the Sports Authority of India, Delhi and are getting trained in basketball,” says Girijavallabhan. There are others waiting to win laurels for this SOS village. Stessy, who recently passed class X examinations, wants to be a fashion designer and Deepika, who completed her B.Sc. nursing, wants to study further and become the principal of a nursing college.
A unique “mother-child” relationship is apparently the secret of the success of this SOS village. As Girijavallabhan says, “SOS inmates have gone ahead in life because they got motherly love and affection.”
Certainly the SOS village in Mulayam, Thrissur has shown that through love and acceptance, the emotional wounds of the destitute and orphan children can be healed and their lives can be built.
India Beats features stories of the unusual, the exotic and the extraordinary.
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