This activist has helped 200 runaway kids return home…Pranati Mehra I TNN
Mumbai: They will tell you all about the woman drug peddler on P DMello Road who sells solution (a combination of typing whitener and thinner) to street children for Rs 15. She sits right behind the hospital wall (St Georges). Everyone fears her. Little Akram will recount how he stole money from home.
They all have their own stories of life on the mean streets of Mumbai. The boys from Guntur, Parbhani, Dibrugarh, Bhiwandi, Rajasthan, Azamgarh and Chattisgarh also talk about a man called Vijay Jadhav.
Thirty-something Jadhav runs the Samatol Foundation, a city NGO which has, so far, sent 200 runaway kids back to their families. Jadhav gave up a job as a power press machine operator to start his own NGO three years ago. I realised that simply rescuing runaway children from the railway stations or from gangs of beggars, sexual offenders and other assorted thugs was not enough. I decided I had to complete the rescue. If the police cannot restore them to their families, we do it, he told TOI on Saturday.
Easier said than done. Runaway kids often shy away from going back to parents either out of fear because they had stolen money or assaulted someone or simply because the big bad world outside, was preferable to the little hell called home. Despite the odds and snide remarks, (He must be selling their kidneys), Jadhav and his team are continuing to do the Good Samaritan act daily.
Jadhav, with his band of five permanent staff and the ever-smiling Mahesh Rasam as his lieutenant, have made a database of 900 runaway kids of whom 200 have been restored to their families. His work stands out for its simplicity. He does not stop at rescuing kids when they arrive at CST and other stations. First, he puts them in various shelters run by other NGOs. He then begins contacting their parents. Before he hands them over to the family, he puts the children through a month-long camp of yoga-meditation, language, math, gardening and craft classes, story-telling, as well as a self-expression module. Detoxification happens alongside, he says. Now, they are willing to look at the world differently.
Samatol invites parents on the last day of the camp without letting the child know that he is about to meet them. The scenes we see when they meet can touch even a hardened criminal, he says. Like Karan Pandits mother, who has been ill for the past eight months, ever since he ran away from his Parbhani home. His uncle asked for permission to bring a band troupe from home to welcome the child.
Samatol concluded a camp for 21 kids at the Hindu Seva Sangh in Mamnoli, 20 km from Kalyan, on Sunday. Eight-yearold Salman, who had run away from his home at Balia in UP, two years ago, sang Ei Mere Watan Ke Logon, bringing tears to the eyes of the 300-strong gathering there.
Samatol can be contacted at 98929-61124 and 99870-30916.
Samatol can be contacted at 98929-61124 and 99870-30916.