A day in the life of a child at a St. Jude's center - 6AM It may seem early, but our centre wakes up at the crack of dawn especially when children have to go to the hospital for their medical treatment. Luckily, there is no major rush to the bathrooms because we have running water and adequate cubicles for...

It took me way longer than expected to get to St. Judes’s; more so because it’s located in a part of Parel that I’m not familiar with. Yes, there’s way more to Parel than Phoenix Mills – as I learnt. Besides there were also a couple of diversions put in place for Lalbaugcha Raja and I went round in...

After a 24-year long career with Unilever in UK, when Nihal Kaviratne returned home to Mumbai with wife Shyama, they were toying with the idea of doing ‘something meaningful’ in the social sector. They had an abiding interest in welfare of destitute children. Philanthropy was in their genes—their parental families had a long tradition of charitable work. Ms Kaviratne’s...

We reached the very clean and quiet station of Ahmadnagar at 8am, all refreshed after our peaceful sleep on the overnight train there from Bombay. This is really the most comfortable way to get to Ahmadnagar – by road, the drive can get too long. Thankfully a cloudy day greeted us. Being a drone-prone area, Ahmadnagar faces quite a...

It says on the organizations website that “Snehalaya was started, by a zealous band of youth volunteers in 1989.” What isn’t clear in this sentence is who the real force amongst these volunteers is. And that is Dr. Girish Kulkarni. It was also one particular incident that led to the formation of Snehalaya. One day, he saw a little girl,...

Lives changed by Diya Foundation at the Candle Room... The candle room is an important part of Diya Foundation as some of the most creative products come out of here. Many specially-abled students like Preethi, Pinto, Deepika and Sheryl have shown significant progress, according to their trainer Sukanya. Deepika, a 16-year-old girl with borderline retardation, assists in the production of...

Diya Foundation was set up in 1999 by Maria S Santamaria (known to all as Sarah). A special educator by profession, she used to teach at the Convent of Jesus & Mary Special School in Byculla, Mumbai. It was during this tenure that she was first moved by the problems faced by parents of mentally-challenged children, especially their dilemma...

Founded in 1999, Diya Foundation (Diya) is a vocational training center cum sheltered workshop in Bangalore that provides training and employment to differently-abled individuals. It was set up by a young lady called Sarah after a trip to the United States where she saw that the physically and mentally disabled there had dignity of labour. This enabled them to...

There's no better way to understand the impact an organisation for special children makes than my speaking to the parents of some of these chldren. Here's what some of the parents, whose wards are at Sangopita, have to say: “This organization is secure and its staff is most hardworking and affectionate. My daughter is being properly taken care of with...

Sangopita was been set up by Mr. and Mrs. Ravindra Sugwekar. Themselves parents of a special child, Aditya, their main motivation for setting up Sangopita arose from the difficulties they faced in finding appropriate care for him in the Thane-Badlapur area. Mr. Sugwekar recalls the days his wife used to travel with Aditya from their home in Badlapur to...