SOS Childrens Village In Punjab

After the end of the second world war, an Austrian national, Hermann Gmeiner, set up the first SOS Childrens Village in 1949 to take care of the countless orphans.

SOS Children's Villages revolve around the effort to give children who have lost their parents or who are no longer able to live with them a permanent home and a stable environment. The SOS Children's Village family-like structure is formed by four basic principles: mother, brothers and sisters, house and village.

Each child is given a so-called SOS mother. She is the main person who cares for this child and is a substitute for the child's natural parents. She lives in a house together with the children that she is looking after. Together with them she organises the family's daily life. She creates strong and dependable relationships and gives the children a safe and loving home. The job of an SOS Children's Village Mother is usually carried out by single women who have to complete an extensive training programme. They are supported in their highly responsible task by educational co-workers as well as by women who are still training to be SOS Children's Village mothers.

Although we in India pride ourselves on the importance we give to the family as a social unit, it was the SOS village unit that has from overseas that has led the way in establishing 36 such villages across the country (an additional 122 allied units).

Construction of a childrens village at Rajpura, Punjab began in 1995 and the village was settled in 1996. SOS Children’s Village Rajpura is situated in the heart of Rajpura Town with easy accessibility to educational, health, and market facilities. The Children’s Village is built in an area of 13.56 acres and with in the same area we also have a Youth House for grown up boys. The village became functional in June 1996 with 32 children in 5 family homes. It comprises of 14 Family Homes and 162 children, comprising of 63 boys and 99 girls, are enjoying the warmth of love and care of their affectionate mothers in 14 houses. In our village we have 12 mothers, 2 Mother Trainees, 4 Aunts and a team of 14 co-workers.

In the field of education, all the children are doing well. 26 children attending Kindergarten, 119 children are studying in different schools in classes I to XII and 6 children are undergoing Vocational Training. Two students are doing General Nursing and Midwifery. Another student is doing a Diploma in Architecture and another one has completed 1st year in B.Sc.Sports from Yamunanagar. Another two girls are doing a course in Tailoring and Embroidery from the Don Bosco Institute.

The second project coming up in Punjab is a Agriculture Vocational Farm Project Chandigarh. Dr. B.N.S.Walia has donated 4 acres of land for establishment of a Vocational Farm Training Centre. The gift deed was registered on September 20th 2004 and possession of land has been taken over.

SOS Childrens Villages has a stellar reputation with many celebrities having endorsed it as the charity of their choice. Johnny Cash for example had a long association with SOS Childrens villages (http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/cgi-bin/sos/jsp/retrieve.do?cat=/514_news_archives&l1=76804&lang=en&nav=5.1&quart=54487&site=ZZ). US based donors can find out from http://www.sos-usa.org/ is they can direct the donations to the Rajpur village and claim the tax benefits of donating to a US based charity. Canada based donors too can direct their donations to the Rajpur village and get the benefits of donating to a Canada based charity http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca)

Warp Speed Ahead with Nishkam

After the initial phone calls and emails, things really began to move ahead at warp speed when it came to my involvement with Nishkam.

Chandran and Karamjit Mann were two key individuals that brought me up to speed on where things were with Nishkam Canada. In June, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the key people that had been driving forward the Nishkam message in Canada, both on their personal front and had been pursuing the setting up of Nishkam Canada as a charity. I also met a young Rajwinder Singh Sandhu at this first meeting and his working for the CCRA gave us tremendous confidence and information that we were on the right path.

Rajwinder along with others was able to direct me to follow all the paperwork required that we had to file both with the Federal government and the Ontario government. Rajwinder was able to locate the person in charge of the Nishkam file so that we could find out what the hold up was with respect to the creation of this new charity to be called “Nishkam Sikh Welfare Organization, Canada”.

By this time I also had done a draft on what the new Nishkam India web site should look like as the previous site was being updated in patches and the navigation was not intuitive at all. Chandran introduced me to Gurinder Singh Rahal (http://www.xenixdesign.com/), person that I have only met on the hone till date. Gurinder was kind enough to take time out and put up a brand new Nishkam India site on a day when the guests had started to our in for his nephews birthday party. I could hear the guests in the background but Gurinder sat at his desk until the web site was uploaded.

It was important to hit the time line because there was an article in the Sikh Spectrum (www.sikhspectrum) that I had written on www.nishkam.org and its founders that was going to be carried and we wanted the new web site to live before that article was live on the world wide web. That article can be read at http://www.sikhspectrum.com/022005/nishkam_hsk.htm