The fragrance of freshly cut grass and the smell of fresh paint mingle at the SOS Children’s Village (SOSCV) at Edathala, near Aluva. Workers are busy tidying the already neat campus as it gears up for its 25th anniversary this month. As part of the celebrations the president and the secretary general of the SOSCV India will visit the campus. The State’s other, and older, SOS village is at Thrissur.
The idea of a family lies at the heart of SOS Villages. Children without parents or parents unable to take care of them find a home, family and much more here. “For me this is home, my mother, Pushpa, is my whole world,” says 29 year-old Anupama, an Ayurveda doctor and one among the earliest children brought here. Pushpa is not her biological mother. Anupama was handed over to Pushpa as a five-year-old by the SOS Village, her mother unable to look after her had left her here.
“Whatever I am today, it is because of my mother,” asserts Joji Vinod, a nurse working in Bahrain, who also grew up here. Anthony T.S. lives close by, probably the eldest among the children of SOSCV Edathala. “I am always here. My mother is here and this is home and I find immense peace of mind here.”
SOSCV was born out of its founder Dr. Hermann Gmeiner’s belief that there was no substitute for a home with a caring mother and that growing up in the company of siblings would ensure complete physical, mental and emotional growth of a child. In short, a substitute family for abandoned or orphaned children. The first SOSCV was established at Imst, Tyrol in Austria in the late 40s.
The sprawling SOSCV campus in Edathala was established in 1990. It has 15 houses/homes, a youth hostel and home for retired mothers. The home houses seven retired mothers.
They are among the first mothers from the initial days of the Edathala SOSCV. They have seen it grow from the original three houses. Their babies came in as helpless little children, whom they nourished with love and their hearts fill up with joy on seeing them flourish into well-adjusted young women and men.
“What we got from being here is immeasurable. Which mother can boast of having 28 children? Can you imagine the love?” the retired mothers ask. A retired mother is something of an anachronism but when SOS mothers reach 60, they are retired. Raising more than two dozen children is an effort.
“When I first responded to the advertisement which asked for women willing to look after children…I had no idea what I was signing up for. I don’t think any of us had a clue. We didn’t know we’d be paid, we had no idea what the job entailed,” says Vimala P., one of the retired mothers. It was a leap of faith for Annamma Thomas. “We never imagined we’d get a house to run, have a home and a family like others,” says Thresiamma C.P.
The biggest payoff for them is the home for retired mothers. “We came here expecting nothing. After 25 years we have this place to call home,” says Parimala Devi V. These mothers by experience taught the young children in their care the first lessons in family and unconditional love. “This was never a job for us,” says Annamma M.V.
While one has 27 children, another has 25 while yet another 33, each of their children is a source of pride. Post-graduates, nurses, hotel management professionals, management professionals, medical technicians, MBAs…the list is enviably endless. They came as mothers and retired as mothers-in-law and grandmothers.
“The mother is at the heart of this endeavour, she has to encourage and enable the children,” says Lissy George, counsellor at SOSCV. These mothers, when they retired, handed over their children to the next generation of mothers, which doesn’t sit well with most of them. They worry about their babies not being able to study or being unhappy, reiterating the fact that a mother doesn’t or cannot retire.
They fret about how difficult it is for the boys from the village to find brides. “When it comes to the boys, the demands are more – a house, a vehicle and property. Which boy, of normal means, can build a house by the time he is 27 or 28?” asks Thresiamma. Joji is one of her daughters. She is visiting Thresiamma with her two children. It is not as difficult finding husbands for the girls, they add.
SOS villages are different from conventional orphanages. As far as these go, the mother is most important. There is an elaborate selection process for mothers, which includes training and a ‘trainee mother period’ after which they get children and a home. Only childless/unmarried women, divorcees or widows are considered.
The SOS gives these mothers a monthly allowance with which they have to run their households, and build a corpus of savings. Most of these retired mothers, with their savings combined with some of their inheritance, have built homes outside the village or in their hometowns. “We have no monetary expectations from our children and what we want – love - we get in plenty,” says Elsamma Paul.
In one of the numbered houses in the village, three-year old Gouri, tags along with her mother Santha. Santha is five years from retirement. Gouri came to her as a pre-term, one day old; it worries Santha that Gouri will only be eight when it is time for her to retire. “I wouldn’t have had the chance to cook her favourite food, dress her up, see her grow…it is an ache in my heart,” she says as Gouri listens from her perch on her mother’s lap. Being a mother is never easy.
