Snehalaya Charitable Trust, Sikroda Village, Gwalior District, Madhya Pradesh, North India
ManASVI
Dr B.K. Sharma thanking volunteers for their work at Snehalaya (2008)
Snehalaya Home was completed in July 2006 and was built in response to the problem of disabled children found abandoned in the city of Gwalior. Once they become the responsibility of the city authorities the Government Mercy Home provides food and shelter, but little else. Often these children arrive in Gwalior from villages and cities far away. The only way out of the Mercy Home for these children is to be claimed by their families (very unlikely) or being accepted by a local orphanage or special school who will provide them a better life and a future. It was because of the shortage of places at these local institutions that Dr B.K.Sharma built the Snehalaya Home.
Dr B.K. Sharma is a UK NHS pediatrician who commenced work in 1994 with his late wife Meena, also a UK NHS doctor, to address the medical needs of the rural poor, especially women and children, in the family’s home district of Gwalior. Dr Sharma raises the funds needed to operate and maintain Snahalaya, a rural hospital, village clinics, and a rural school, through the Gwalior Health and Educational Charitable Trust (GHECT) in India and the Gwalior Childrens’ Charity (UK registered charity 1063694) in the. He is officially recognised in India and internationally for his services to the poor.
Snehalaya Home is built upon a 20 acre rural site which includes a farm and a school. Children taken into care are in the charge of a resident carer (usually a family having one or two children of their own) in one of ten bungalows. The home has a full time doctor and a physiotherapist, and also can call on volunteer medical specialists in Gwalior and overseas. Some of the children in care have very profound disabilities such as cerebral palsy. Most have mental disabilities or learning difficulties. For them the Snehalaya Home will be a home for life. This has led to Snehalaya becoming a community where under supervision older residents do what work they are capable of doing on the farm, the kitchens, and in the accommodation to help in make the Home self sustainable.
The number of children who can be cared for at Snehalaya is limited by funding. ManASVI supports Dr B.K.Sharma’s work at Snehalaya Home by sponsoring children resident there.