Salaam Baalak Trust - History

History

Original established in 1988, to rehabilitate the children who appeared in the film, Salaam Bombay! (1988) in Mumbai, Salaam Baalak Trust started working in 1989, and by 2005 it had seventeen centre for street child throughout India.

In New Delhi, SBT started its operations with 25 children in the open-air balcony at the police station at the New Delhi Railway Station, when three trustees inspired by the film, started caring for them.

Starting 1999, Family Health International (FHI), with funding from USAID, started working with the SBT, on HIV/AIDS education and prevention, while supplying, street children aged between 4 and 13 with food, medical aid, education, and essential supplies. Over the its shelters have been visited by various national and international dignitaries, including, Tony Blair and Cherie Blair (2005).

Since 2003, it has also been working with volunteers from University College Dublin Volunteers Overseas, (UCDVO). In 2006, Salaam Baalak Trust won the ‘Civil Society Award’ from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and UNAIDS. Earlier in March, it started a guided city walk, through the areas managed by the Trust, its shelters, contact points, and areas around the New Delhi Railway Station in Paharganj, where the streen children live and earn a living, doing menial jobs, the tour guided by former street children themselves, sensitizing people about the lives of street children in Delhi, and the turnaround possible in their lives, when given an opportunity.

Its latest home, Arushi, built exclusively for girls, was open in New Delhi, in August 2008, and provides shelter to over 70 girls, the Arushi centre at Gurgaon, also opened in 2008, houses around 45 girls, aged between five and 18.