Founder’s Day at centre for de-addiction

NEW DELHI, January 7: From Yamuna Pushta to the stage at Shah Auditorium — it has been a long journey for the children. Wearing orange caps and red ribbons, they sang with gusto, imparting basic lessons on cleanliness to the audience. They themselves have learnt these lessons from Navjyoti, a Delhi Police foundation for correction, de-addiction and rehabilitation.

Navjyoti celebrated its Foundation Day today and gave an insight about how they mould lives, giving them a new direction. “We started in the Yamuna Pushta area with a school for the street children there. Today we run three major programmes — primary education for children, women’s development programmes and the de-addiction programme,” says Suneel Vatsyayan, Director of Navjyoti.

But the personal account of Neela David gave a good insight into the kind of work the organisation does. “I was in jail when Kiran Bedi came to me. With her help, I learnt sewing and more importantly a will to survive without going back to crime. Now, I have been teaching in the school at Yamuna Pushta for many years and at present there are 700 children studying under me,” she says, her voice thick with emotions.

Her’s was a profile in courage. She stood on the podium and said that she had been a drug peddler. She admitted that she earned much more then than she does now. Then she added that there were 25 other women who were like her and with her now. She got the loudest round of applause.