Shanti Niketan Ashram

The Shanti Niketan Social Welfare Society (SNSWS) has been running a foster home, the Shanti Niketan Ashram (SNA), for the old, sick, accident victims, mentally and physically challenged homeless people, left on the streets of Delhi.

The SNSWS provides them with food, shelter, clothes, medical care and social and psychological support in regaining their health and status as a human being. The inmates in the foster home are found and picked up from streets, footpaths, gates of government hospitals, nearby railway tracks, garbage sheds etc., with gangrene and maggots in parts of the body, mostly disoriented or in unconscious state of mind.

SNA’s Mission:

• Provide residential care with medical and psychological support for all abandoned people and restore their Human Dignity.
• Rehabilitation of the destitute.
• Building up network with like- minded individuals, groups and organizations to provide effective support to the destitute.
• A better forum for the neglected brothers.

Our Approach:

The care starts with changing the dirty clothes, a full body bath, emergency first aid, haircut, and providing food to eat.

After two to three days of initial care at home and other emergency medical care, they reach to a state where they can be taken to a hospital for proper medical investigation and treatment (since hospitals won’t take these patients if we take them in the stage they are found). In the hospital they are being investigated for TB (Tuberculosis), HIV, AIDS, and mental health, etc.  Most of them are referred to Psychiatrist and their psychiatric medication begins there. Some are with epileptic attacks, some are mentally unstable and some require debridement of wounds and even surgery.

These patients require continuous attention and medical care to regain their mental and physical health. Once they regain their lost pride as a human being, regular medication, peer support, and constant care promotes their faster recovery. We aim to reunite them with their family if possible and if not, they remain under our care till they can work themself.

Many are found in their last days and they are brought in for a better care during such stage. With proper care, many of them recover back to life. Very sick and feeble inmates are given proper care till their last breath at Shanti Niketan Destitute Home. On their demise, their last rites are performed with dignity in their own religion by the home.

The foster home is accommodating 31 people as on 30th August 2021. These inmates are old, sick, physically, and/or mentally challenged people who requires constant care and support. They are provided with food, accommodation, medical care, social and psychological support.

Few of our children who had fully recovered from their physical and mental illness have joined their families in various states. There are few inmates who have fully recovered, yet do not wish to go back to their own folks due to the ill treatment meted out to them by the society and have volunteered to help other inmates and in day-to-day upkeep of the home.

Blanket Distribution

We also volunteer to distribute the old/new winter clothes donated by the well-wishers, during the severe winter in the streets of Delhi for those unfortunate people who do not have a shelter to sleep under. Many at times it is done during the night to recognize the needy ones.

Food Distribution

The Society engages in providing food for the people in crisis, as and when we get the call for help. The role of our dear benevolent donors in supporting and helping us in distributing food-kits during the Covid-19 pandemic is worth mentioning.

Volunteer Works

We also volunteer with other like-minded individuals, and/or groups, to extend our reach beyond our limits and serve the poor and needy in our society.

A Tailoring Unit

A stitching class was inaugurated on the first floor of the Ashram by H.E. Dr. Jacob Mar Barnabas and Mrs. Shilpa Mammen in 2019, as there are two professional tailors available among the inmates. A tailoring unit started functioning at the Shanti Niketan Ashram since then.