R Gopinath, Managing Trustee, Sparsha Trust
- He did his masters in social work at Bangalore University. His parents were laborers and had to face a lot of trouble.
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Podcast
Overview
Mr. Gopinath has faced a lot of abuse in his own life which led him on this path of helping children make a better life for themselves. Helping children has been just one part of what his trust does. He does a lot of work from rescuing children to providing senior citizens with old age homes. Today we talk to him about all the work that he has done and what his trust is doing for children, women, and senior citizens.
00:35 – About Mr. Gopinath
- He did his masters in social work at Bangalore University. His parents were laborers and had to face a lot of trouble.
- He was forced to live with his relatives because his parents could not take care of him. Later, his stepmother enrolled him in the fourth class and there has been no looking back for education.
- He faced a lot of abuse himself which led him to initiate this trust with his classmates, and he has been helping children, women, and senior citizens since then.
03:36 – How did you get involved with this Sparsha Trust and what are some of its activities?
- It has been my own dream. We started in 2005 with my classmates. Its aim is to help as many children as it can to get an education.
- It is connected with myself. I don’t want to see children go through what I did, and I want to help children get the care and support needed to achieve better things in life.
- We initiated this trust to create a wonderful facility to help children create the best possible life for themselves.
05:17 – Can you tell us more about Child Care, Child Development, and Youth Empowerment?
- We have a helpline 1098 to help children from abuse. We try to rescue children from child labor and child abuse etc.
- Then we try to provide those children with food, shelter, education, awareness, and guidance. Because once the rescue part is done, they need to be given proper guidance.
- We started youth empowerment to get our children interested in different careers after a certain education. Now, we get children from various parts, and we provide these services free of cost.
13:47 – How do you get the information about children who are facing problems and what procedure do you follow to take them to Sparsha?
- We run a child helpline in Bangalore rural and Kola district. We get at least one or two calls every day through that.
- We also have good relations with government systems such as the Child Welfare Committee.
- We also have our field workers who go to the streets and rescue the children and spread awareness.
18:05 – Tell me a bit about your initiative for women empowerment and homeless and senior citizens.
- What we understood was that if we take care of the women and strengthen them then they take care of their families and make their families better. This was the reason we decided to get into women’s empowerment.
- Homelessness is a very pathetic life situation. It makes even educated people lose hope in their lives which is why we try to provide shelter to homeless people so that at least they can feel like they have people who care about them and build their life from there.
- We are building some homes for senior citizens also. We want to provide them with the support of a family so that they can enjoy their last days happily.
RESOURCES:
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- He did his masters in social work at Bangalore University. His parents were laborers and had to face a lot of trouble.
- He was forced to live with his relatives because his parents could not take care of him. Later, his stepmother enrolled him in the fourth class and there has been no looking back for education.
- He faced a lot of abuse himself which led him to initiate this trust with his classmates, and he has been helping children, women, and senior citizens since then.
