Gary Gamer, Holt President and CEO
Bangalore, India—Vathsalya Charitable Trust has been Holt International’s partner in Bangalore for the last 18 years. On June 23rd, a new chapter in its history began with the inauguration a new center out of which to serve children who are in need of families.
Holt International and Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT) are actually dedicated to reversing the role of child caring facilities as a substitute for families…and transferring the care of children who are abandoned and outside of family care to families in communities.
VCT has been in the forefront in India to do this through its model foster care program. The vast majority of its children are in temporary foster care. The new center will serve an outreach center to support foster care through well baby clinics and as a staging area for social workers to go out into the community to support foster families.
Dr. Becca Brandt, a physician on Holt International’s Board was invited to conduct the first well baby clinic at the new center during inauguration day.
VCT and this new center will be a sanctuary for children who are abandoned and whose lives hang in the balance. They will be nurtured and healed through the caring hearts and attentive hands of the child caring and medical staff.
This center will enable children who have disabilities and special needs to live in dignity and in an environment of support and love…and receive therapies to give them a fighting chance.
And it will provide a safe haven for mothers who are in crisis, to assist them in their decision making relating to their child, and to support them getting their feet back on the ground and move ahead in their lives. Indeed, the word Vathsalya translates to the love a mother can give.
The tenuous nature of not having a permanent center for VCT to work out of has come to an end with the support of some 140 donors in the United States. These supporters join many people in Bangalore and across India that have made the new center possible as well.
There are few things in the world that I can think of that are more transforming than the work and impact that will spin out from the Vathsalya center.
Children’s lives will be saved. Incredible healing will occur. Hearts that ache will be comforted. Hope will be restored. And the miracle of families will be created…both families here in India, and families from around the world who will forever be tied to the great country of India through adoption.
Children receiving Vathsalya’s services will become rocket scientists, ambassadors, artists, humanitarians, husbands, wives, parents, adoptive parents, grandparents, entrepreneurs, champions…the list goes on.
What we celebrate in the opening of Vathsalya’s center is not this structure per se, as important as it is to have a home. It is the powerful force of love and compassion that will spread out from it, to give us hope in this troubled world, indeed to change the world one precious child at a time.
Congratulations to VCT and heartfelt thanks to so many who enabled the Vathsalya center to become a reality.
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