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Visakhapatnam
Home that provides succour to urchins
Children singing `bhajans' at the PAPA Home. - Photo: K.R. Deepak
A fifth standard student, who failed in his annual examination, was thrashed by his strict parents and the disillusioned boy ran away from home and boarded a train to Orissa. He landed in Cuttack and slept on the platform. When he woke up he was hungry and pleaded with a vendor for some food. The vendor asked the boy to fetch some water from a nearby pump and after the boy brought it he was given food, as if in exchange. The boy spent three days on the platform until he was traced following a police complaint and handed back to his parents.
Many a child try this experience and the fortunate ones end up going back home and the less fortunate ones end up on the streets or platforms taking up a different lifestyle altogether.
Vizag would be having a lot more of urchins on the streets today had it not been for the brainchild of the former Commissioner of Police, K. Durga Prasad (now with AP Transco). Noticing a number of urchins wandering around in the city in tattered clothes and dishevelled hair, with no home to go back, he wanted to set up a home for these kids on the lines of Child and Police (CAP) in Hyderabad, and proposed this idea to K. Vasudeva Rao, an active member of the Lions Club with a keen interest in social welfare projects.
Vasudeva Rao, a regular morning walker, once happened to notice two young rag pickers with bags on their shoulder enjoying a cup of tea. He went to them and enquired about their background, earnings, etc. He was moved by their fate and decided to implement the Police Commissioner's idea. Thus PAPA (Public And Police Association for street children) was born on November 14, 1999, and has since been a home for all the displaced urchins loitering all over Visakhapatnam. Life on the streets invariably brings these children into contact with evil influences. And brushes with the law are inevitable.
These children are initially educated at the Bridge School and are later joined to other schools like MJM, St. Anthony's and Seventh Day Adventist depending upon their performance.
Balakrishna, one of the two kids spotted by Vasudeva Rao, after spending three years at PAPA, is now studying in Class III at the Seventh Day Adventist School and is now capable of legible handwriting. He is also well versed in reciting slokas, thanks to PAPA that has transformed his life.
Ramu, his counterpart, has now rejoined his family under the `back home' policy of PAPA.
The objective of this home is to ensure that these children regained their lost moorings in life, and plays the role of a supportive parent and provides them education and vocational training so that they can support themselves independently.
Nookaraju, Kanaka Raju and Siva Kumar, three brothers in a happy family, were enjoying normal life until a fire broke out in Arilova. The three boys escaped the wrath of the fire but their mother who was down with high fever was burnt alive and their father, an auto rickshaw driver, rushed back to his house on hearing the news, slipped into a coma and passed away shortly.
PAPA, which has taken these kids under its wings, is now the guardian and has ensured that these brothers attend school at the Seventh Day Adventist.
Santosh had a different story to tell. His father who was an alcoholic forced the boy to beg in order to appease his habit. Once begging near Jagadamba Junction, Santosh was trying to retrieve some coins underneath a jeep, which belonged to the former Deputy Commissioner of Police, Suryaprakasa Rao, who was moved by the plight of the boy and had him enrolled at the PAPA.
The present Commissioner of Police, B. Prasada Rao, says that PAPA, which has been started with an objective of providing succour to the abandoned children, is a wonderful concept to nurture the street children into responsible citizens by way of educating them and, if possible, imparting vocational courses.
PAPA has been recognised and certified as a fit institution under the Juvenile Justice Act. It celebrates the birthdays of its inmates and for those whose dates of birth are not known, the date of entry into PAPA is taken as the date of birth for the purpose.
Bala Vikas Foundation also teaches them slokas and bhajans.
PAPA is ably supported by 14 service organisations, besides assistance from local business circles. Dolphin Milk donates milk. Chandana Bros managing partner, Mavuri Venkata Ramana, gives the PAPA inmates school uniforms on an annual basis. Mira Collections has offered tiffin boxes and Goti Sons donated steel boxes.
It is Vizag's fortune that a fewer number of juvenile delinquents are cropping and the credit goes to institutions like PAPA which play a key role in moulding the future of such children.
Coming back to the fifth standard student, who had spent three days on the Cuttack station platform. He had grown up by dint of hard work and perseverance. He is none other than K. Vasudeva Rao, who is instrumental in setting up PAPA, for he had graduated from that gruelling real life experience.
PUSHPA BHARGAVA
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