COIMBATORE: As part of a community drive, Vanitha Rengaraj was helping out at a slum in Gandhi Nagar in Pollachi when she came across a 10-year-old intellectually-disabled child. Living in a kutcha house, the child was alone at home as others had gone to work. There were marks from cat bites on him. He was playing around the house and had soiled himself. The child was diagnosed with cerebral palsy but people in the area called him ‘poochi’.
She decided then to take him in and start a home for the intellectually-disabled and abandoned. “I named him Sakthi. My friends wanted me to drop the plan, but I stuck to it. My father too supported and gave me some money to run the home for a year,” the 67-year-old recalls. Vanitha rented a building in Pollachi and started the home with six children.
This was in the year 2000. More than two decades later, Vanitha’s ‘Sharanalayam Jothi’ has grown leaps and bounds. Spread across the district, it now constitutes an orphanage and home for the elderly, apart from three homes for the mentally-challenged. The home in Pollachi now takes care of nearly 200 children and senior citizens. At present, 80 mentally-challenged women in the age group of 16 to 80 years are under rehabilitation at Sharanalayam Jothi at Kinathaukkadavu, and 65 orphaned children are being taken care of and given education at Sharanalayam Dhaya, apart from the free old-age home for 22 members.
Several HIV-affected children who had been given shelter at Sharanalayam earlier, now lead normal lives. Some work at the shelter, while some others, outside. “We used to reunite mentally-challenged people with their families if the members agreed. In most cases, the relatives don’t come forward as they find maintaining them difficult,” Vanitha says.
“We started an old-age home with a minimum payment. The surplus funds from it is used to take care of the mentally-challenged. We are the only adoption agency in Coimbatore that takes in children only through the Child Welfare Committee,” she says. “Many of our former inmates now work as engineers and nurses. They come to celebrate Deepavali and Pongal with the inmates,” Vanitha says.
Vanitha attributes her success in running the shelters to her family. “Many told me I can’t run the home even for a month. But with the support of my father, husband and two daughters I am able to run it,” she adds. Apart from this, Vanitha also plans to provide palliative care for cancer patients who are in the terminal stages.
Vanitha’s younger daughter, Sharanya who is the Secretary of Sharanalayam, says that they have given Applied Behaviour Analysis therapy free of cost to 20 students in Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital, and Pollachi Government Hospital, along with paid service at a centre in Ramanathapuram and the flower market.