Salaam Baalak Trust – review 2010

For more information on SBT follow this link: Salaam Balak Trust

• Financially, 2009 was pretty much a disaster.  All sources of funding (private donations, the corporate sector, support from US Trusts hit by the Madoff scandal) declined, and the State funding which used to represent 15% of SBT’s budget vanished altogether: Delhi is too busy trying to finish the Commonwealth Games venues on time.
• This shortfall is inevitably affecting the work of the Trust.  Non-core spending has already gone (no annual drama production, no sports day; annual trip outside Delhi is at risk), and salaries for the 100 staff have been late. 
• However (and with ironic timing in view of the funding crisis) two major new shelter home projects have been in progress:
  • As you read this, about 80 school-going boys in SBT’s full time care are shifting to a magnificent new 3-storey building (right) – built, paid for and equipped by the Delhi Metro and run by SBT, for the first 5 years at least. There’s also a night shelter for street children who would otherwise be at Metro stations (the 21st century Delhi version of the railway station kids SBT started working with).
  • The agreement, concluded some time ago (before the funding crisis) to build a new girls’ shelter is about to be finalised, and there’s a last push for the extra funds SBT needs to provide to complete the purchase.  SBT already has one girls’ shelter but outside the Delhi city boundary: there is a pressing need for more girls’ accommodation in Delhi itself.

OPS funding

• OPS funds in 2009 continued to go towards the Old Delhi contact point.  
• In the last full financial year for SBT (ending 31/3/09), the funds received from OPS represented two thirds of the operating budget of the contact point. (Rupees 144,000 out of a total of 215,000 / approx £1,925 out of £2,875)

Old Delhi contact point (OD) - operation

• As a reminder, contact points are not open 24 hours like shelter homes but provide street kids with a place they can come for food and non-formal education and with a view to encouraging them to join the full-time shelters.
• Some have a small building they can use but at OD there is no structure at all: just a regular space on the edge of a park (right)
• OD runs two shifts for different children: in the morning from 9 till 1 for street children who otherwise have no access to proper food or education (finishing with a meal – which a few of them are eating, below), and in the afternoon for children who are on the streets but may have some family and do go to school in the morning.  Most of the afternoon children are in formal school (between classes 1 and 8) but 4 are doing vocational training. 
• Currently they have about 30 children in each group, although the number of morning kids varies more – they are a shifting population. 
• The total number of children who made use of the contact point in the six months to September 2009 was 113, and during this period four of these children moved into a shelter home.  SBT has a ‘target’ (somewhat artificial) of 24 children to be moved into shelter from OD and this may be an area where more counselling work is needed.
• By contrast, an impressive 32 children were restored to their families in the 6 months (the same number as in the whole year 2008-9).  Another 6 were referred to hospital for investigation and 4 for treatment.
• There are, literally, no overheads.  Although having somewhere to shelter from the elements would obviously be better in some of Delhi’s extremes of weather, currently they are managing to provide about 60 children with at least the opportunity to change their lives, and are doing this without paying any rent, maintenance or utility bills.
• An exact breakdown is difficult, but the main expenditure is on staff salaries (two full-time staff, one co-ordinator who works at Old Delhi on Tuesdays and Thursdays), food and educational supplies.
• Drug use / addiction is a problem but is definitely not universal.  As with any group of street kids in Delhi, some are into solvent abuse but not a majority, and the school-going children are pretty much clean.

Conclusion / Outlook

• Although SBT as a whole is moving from a degree of crisis in 2009 to a transformation in 2010, at least of its facilities, as far as Old Delhi is concerned there are no major changes in the short term.  Having shifted from their initial place on platform 1a of the station itself, which was open to too much distraction and interference especially from drug-using kids, they now have a formula that works better.  If the potential for a building arose, and the funds were available, that would obviously be a more major decision.
• More generally, SBT is suffering not just because of a shortfall of funding but because much of what support does come is tied to specific projects – often buildings.  Just at the moment what it really needs are committed, reliable donors who will fund its everyday costs: the  work of staff who are there slowly to get the message across to children living on the street that another life for them can be possible if they are willing to try it. 
• In my view, that sort of funding is what OPS has been providing for a few years now, and at two-thirds of the OD budget the contact point would not be able to operate without it.  And that patient, behind-the-scenes work that goes on at OD seems exactly appropriate.  Time permitting, I would like to follow the children’s progress more closely to get a deeper view of the effect on their lives of attending the contact point, but I believe the current use of OPS money on the contact point is effective and appropriate and should continue in largely the same format.

Nick Thompson
January 2010