Ruled by the religion of love

About 23 children from diverse backgrounds have found a home in Lovedale. With love and compassion for one another, these children live as a family under one roof, leaving behind the traumas of their past and hoping for a new life.

Away in the outskirts of Bangalore is a shelter for the poor and deprived children of our society in the form of Lovedale Foundation. Giving shape to his vision of serving the destitutes, Late Dr J Godfred started it in the year 2001. Shortly after establishing this haven, Dr J Godfred passed away, leaving his philanthropic mission to be carried forward by his daughter Jayani. Lovedale Home functions from a rented premises on Horamavu main road near Banaswadi.

At present, Lovedale is home to 23 children in the age group of 4 to 14, from diverse backgrounds and cultures across the nation. Though most kids are picked up from the streets, there are also children of underprivileged parents, those abandoned by parents, children of HIV positive parents and sex workers, and those subjected to abuse and violence. Lovedale provides them all with foster care, nutritious food, health care, counselling, education, love and support. Bangalore City Commissioner’s Office recognises Lovedale Foundation and places children they rescue from undesirable situations in this safe home.

Priorities
Lovedale prioritises education as the basic necessity. To this extent, they aim at providing quality education to these children so that they will be on par with children from privileged backgrounds.

“We give them quality education. All our children are sent to St George’s English Medium Convent run by the Orthodox Missionary Church. They are educated under the ICSE syllabus,” says Jayani.
Apart from this, volunteers from Microsoft visit Lovedale every Sunday and teach these children English and other foreign languages like French and German. “They bring their own study material for the children,” she says.

Any visitor to this home will be surprised at the ease with which these children speak various languages. Four-year-old Sweety, who was brought here from Kolkata, can speak almost all South Indian languages, apart from Hindi and English.

Lovedale also supports 117 children in the villages of Rampura, Angalpura, Channasandra and Gubbi, as also seven poor families in the nearby areas with food and medication.

The Foundation has an enthusiastic set of volunteers who conduct research in the rural as well as urban areas of the State to identify deprived children. They even organise awareness sessions for the parents of such children to convince them of the need to educate their children.

“Education is the only means by which children can hope to improve their standard of living as well as contribute their part to the greater mission of nation building,” says Jayani.
Lovedale also has professional counsellors serving as volunteers to counsel children who have undergone abuse and torture in the hands of anti-social elements.

“We also support Ashraya Charitable Trust,” says Jayani, who is a part of I Care, a non-profit organisation that aims at finding sustainable solutions to the varied problems of street children. Lovedale presently has two foreigner nationals from Canada and the US working as volunteers, recruited through I Care. “They will be here for about six months, helping children in various activities,” says Jayani.

Literacy plan
Their literacy plan includes 100 per cent education coverage for the children in Bangalore, spreading awareness about the need for education, fund raising, identifying and reviewing programmes for street children, playing a consultative role in reviewing these programmes, setting up of a vast resource centre of learning, introducing innovative methods of learning, networking with governmental departments and other institutions in the field of education, women and children, and community development. Further, they also plan to build a committed group of volunteers to help Lovedale carry its mission forward.

Running a home with 23 children is no mean task. With no proper flow of funds, Jayani pulls through each month with the support of her family and friends. “We are trying to get corporates to helps us with funds,” she says. But, according to Jayani, most corporate houses are only interested in contributing to organisations that are well known. The reason for this, she says, is that corporates are looking at such charity work as part of their image building.

Projects
Lovedale has certain projects through which they get people who want to help such children involved. Some of these include ‘Sponsor a child’, ‘Sponsor a meal’, ‘Sponsor their education’ and ‘Become a volunteer with Lovedale’.

Lovedale’s latest project is Mission 365, launched officially on March 4, 2007. “There are many people in our society wanting to do charitable work. But most often they don’t know how to go about it. Moreover, an average individual may find it really expensive to sponsor a child or their education for one full year. So we have come up with this idea of giving such people an opportunity to help us by shelling out one rupee a day for a child for a year. That’s Mission 365,” says Jayani.

Mission 365 is also a way of building up a community of people who believe in the betterment of underprivileged children. Lovedale dreams of providing 100 per cent literacy to all the children in Bangalore through this initiative. Hence they plan to set up education centres across Karnataka.

“To start with, we are planning to open a centre in Bangalore. These children will also be given health support,” she said. This centre will be a bridge school that will give these children basic education. “It will be functional from June this year from the premises of St George’s Convent,” she says.