Adapting to changes

“There was an adoption in our family and we saw what joy it brought into our home. This is why we wanted to start an organisation to promote adoption. When we researched the situation in Pune,we found that there were many parents wanting to adopt,but there were no children in the adoption agencies. When we went into the rural areas,we found the situation to be quite the opposite there,” recalls Dasgupta. She adds that earlier parents in the urban areas were not open to the idea of adopting from rural areas. But that has changed now.

Working in Maharashtra,Goa,Orissa,Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh they are working on bridging the urban and rural divide in the area of adoption. Dasgupta mentions that their work primarily consists of helping families find the right homes for children awaiting adoption,enhancing the living standards and work conditions and cultivate an adoption friendly environment through networking with the government,judicial and other authorities that are a part of the adoption process.

However the catalyst for their work was a huge hoarding placed strategically on the Mumbai-Pune expressway. The hoarding displayed smiling faces of five children with a caption below it asking the question,‘Which one of them is adopted?’ “The adoption processes picked up from that point. It made people realise that children are children and the only concern of the parents was the health of the child,” says Dasgupta.

Under the holistic child care,CSA focuses on the health,education,recreation of the children and also the training of the staff in the orphanages and child care centres,who look after the children. Dasgupta mentions that they also raise funds through annual charity dinners,the first of which was hosted in 2010 by the British High Commision. This year,the event took place at Waterstones Club,Mumbai on October 5 where many corporate officials were invited to donate for the charitable cause. The evening also saw some entertaining performances that included a dance show put up by Sanjay Soparkar’s dance troupe and the children from the orphanages,an art auction and more. “The dinner was a success. We managed to raise funds that will enable us to reach out to more agencies in other states,” ends Dasgupta.