Project Aarogya: Bringing Health to Street Children

Asmita Rajiv, Geetha Prem, Ritu Jain, Savita Singh and Nondini Das come from different backgrounds, these ladies, who are also mothers, have joined hands to work for a common cause. They want to make a difference in the lives of children. They feel the need to do something worthwhile for the street children who have been deprived of their childhood, love and care, and most importantly, are being deprived of a hope for a bright and healthy future.

Project Aarogya is an initiative started by some of the residents of Ranka Court Apartments, Cambridge Layout, to provide medical attention to street children in Bangalore.

As a part of the project, the team organized a Medical camp for street children in the City Market area on November 24th. Four doctors volunteered for the camp. Around 120 street children came for medical check-up. The team sought help from an NGO called BOSCO, which is doing great work on rehabilitation of street children who suffer from malnutrition and scabies. Children suffering from common ailment were prescribed medicines, which the team had provided by collecting funds from the residents of Ranka Court Apts.

Children with special medical needs were identified; and their cases are being taken forward by local hospitals to ensure that the required treatment is provided to them. Similar medical camps would be organized on a regular basis with multiple objectives in mind- (i) to provide immediate medical relief, (ii) to do follow-up check-ups, (iii) to identify children with serious medical conditions and (iv) to ensure their complete recovery.

The team is hoping that many more people join them in this cause to take a stand for these children whom the larger society seems to have given up on.

With this first phase of the project complete, the residents of the Ranka Court Apartments have set out on their next goal: Getting Medical Health for at least 100 street children by Jan 8, 2008.

Beyond that they have a long term objective to incorporate a Trust of core team members, with an objective of starting additional projects and initiatives such as “Aarogya” in areas like health care, education, training, arts & crafts etc, and tie-up with different NGOs to implement these initiatives

The Trust would implement these projects/ initiatives by doing one or more of the following:

• Conceptualization
• Garnering Funds
• Providing assistance in backend operations
• Organizing events
• Providing person-hours
• End-to-end execution of project