Salaam Balak, NGO of the year 2009
The Salaam Baalak Trust, Mumbai today bagged the Indian NGO award for the NGO of the year 2009.
The Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) works to provide a holistic safety net of services to street children. SBT centres offer food, shelter, medical assistance, creative and sport actvities and vocational training to these children. The first centre was started in 1989 as a result of the film ‘Salaam Bombay’ by its director Mira Nair and has since continued to work with children in South Mumbai. It has now expanded services to Kalyan and Solapur. SBT won the award in the small category.
Other recipients of the NGO of the year 2009 are: Calcutta Rescue and India Foundation for the Arts (both joint awardees in medium category) and DHAN Foundation (Large category). The categories have been made on the basis of the annual budget of the organisation. Calcutta Rescue was founded in 1979 by Dr Jack Preger as a roadside clinic in Kolkata. It is working since past 30 years to provide healthcare, education, medical services and vocational training to the poor and marginalised in Kolkata and rural West Bengal.
India Foundation for the Arts is a philanthropic organisation making grants since 1996 to artists, scholars, researchers and educators across various disciplines and genres in the art. DHAN (Development of Human Action) Foundation has been working since 1997 to make significant changes in the livelihood of the poor through building scalable, cost effective and sustainable innovations for self-reliance.
The regional awardees in small category are SShrishti (North), Vision Aid (south) and Palsa Pally Unnayan Samity (East).
The NGOs which made it to the list of awardees in the medium category are Katha (North), Dream-a-dream(south), NEEDS(east) and GSNP+(west).
The large category awardees are Development Awardees and HelpAge India(North), Indian Grameen Services (east) and GiveIndia(west).
Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Mukul Wasnik did the honours.
The members of the jury included Arun Maira, member of Planning Commission; Pradeep Gupta, chairman of the CyberMedia Group, South Asia’s first and largest specialty media house; Ajay S Mehta, execuive Director and CEO of National Foundation for India; Rohini Nilekani, an ex-journalist, chairperson and founder of Arghyam and Rowland Roome, CEO of Aga Khan Foundation, India.
The jury visited the territory of work of various NGOs and assessed their performance on various parameters from services to finances.
The India NGO awards were instituted by The Resource Alliance in 2006, with an aim to advance the country’s non-profit sectors by promoting financial and organisational sustainability.