If you want more info than is provided here or have questions, feel free to contact the Bridges Program Representative for India Jordan Vaccariello at: jordan@bridges-program.org
Who
runs
the
home
The Jeevan Ujjwal Children’s Home is operated by the Maharashtra Baptist Society (MBS), which is an organization of churches around the city of Mumbai, India. They partner together to focus on serving people in need of whom children are some of the most vulnerable.
care for and develop at-risk boys
Turbhe is a small area in Mumbai where commercial sex work is legal. Many of the women who have been trapped here by the ugly sex-trafficking trade have young boys and girls who are growing up in this horrible environment, exposed to and often ensnared in the many evils there.
The Katkari are a group of indigenous tribal people in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Many of them are enslaved as indentured servants making bricks and overall the tribe is living in abject poverty. The children have little hope of education or getting out of the cycle of servitude and poverty.
Krupa has been a pastor with the Maharashtra Baptist Society (MBS) for 24 years and is supported in the work by his wife, Mary, and their three children. Krupa and Mary have a passion to care for children in need. Seeing the plight of the many children in the Red Light district of Turbhe and also of the many poor children in the Katkari Tribal group they were moved with compassion to start the Children’s Home.
The Children's Home started in 2005 when Krupa and Mary took a couple of boys from these at-risk backgrounds to be with them in their personal home. They eventually rented out a small house in Panvel where they were able to house about 10 boys.
In 2004 MBS acquired land in a small village outside of Mumbai in order to build a new Children’s Home. This new home was to house more children from at-risk situations and to be an outreach center for serving the surrounding villages. But due to lack of finances and local opposition the construction did not start until 2015. Miraculously the home was completed in 2017 and Krupa and Mary moved there to oversee the work.
Currently the Home houses 12 boys ages 6-15 both from the Red Light area and the Katkari tribal group. At the Home the boys are educated in English medium schools, given a healthy living environment, provided with nutritious food and deeply cared for. The home also provides daycare, education and food for children who live in the area.
The hopes are manifold. Krupa and Mary desire to hire quality caregivers in order to have more children in the Home. They want to open an English school along with a medical clinic which will help the locals along with bringing an income to support the Home. They also desire to start a Home for little girls who currently live in the Red Light area.
$4500 USD needed every month to operate the Children's Home
$150 USD needed every month to support a child
To get information about our Sponsorship Program and how to sponsor and individual child,
contact Jordan at jordan@bridges-program.org
For safety we only share the children's personal information through direct contact
100% of your donation will go towards the support of the Home and every gift is tax deductible!