Providing a shelter for street children in the red light district

Mumbai, India

Overview

Bombay Teen Challenge (BTC) began in 1990 when Mr. K. K. Devaraj, its founder and executive director, came to Mumbai, India, with a passion to reach the young generation that was ensnared in drugs, gangs, and prostitution. Today, BTC is one of the largest NGOs working in the field of Health and Education. Their work includes the rescue and rehabilitation of women involved in the sex trade industry and children at risk.

In 2005, BTC opened a new shelter with potential capacity to house 100 children. BTC staff rescues children found on the streets begging and surviving on their own through many degrading means, and brings them to the shelter for a home, food, clothes, education, and full time care. As a phase one providing emergency help, the children stay here for 6 months to one year depending on their circumstances, and then are transferred to a BTC home outside of the city.

Need

All over the streets of Mumbai, young children are forced to beg, some deliberately mutated to aid them in catching the attention of passers by. Others are runaways who have left home due to abuse and/or poverty, and still others are the children of women in prostituion who either wait on the streets while their mothers work, rather than be in the room, or who have been put on the street while she works. Many have lost their mothers to AIDS and now survive on the streets alone. Vulnerable to various forms of abuse, drug addiction, and damaging means of survival, the children are left to a life of destruction and harm unless they are rescued.

The Project

In 2005, Wellspring provided funds to renovate an old building in the heart of the red light district. Now operating as the children.s shelter, Wellspring continues to provide the funds for annual running costs. Providing a refuge for children, it is a safe environment where meals are eaten, they are taken to school, medical care is given, homework is completed, and clean beds are provided.

View Photos from this project.