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Some WIDE girls with crocheted hats are lying in a circle.

WIDE Children's Home India

Every child deserves a family - that is the motto of Kumari Xavier, the founder of the WIDE Children's Home at the foot of the holy mountain Arunachala in South India.

How do you come to found a children's home?

At the age of 6, Kumari became a half-orphan. Her mother had no choice but to place her in a children's home, where she received an education and grew up in a stable environment. But she missed being treated with love there.

Before her mother died, she encouraged Kumari to give back some of the help she had received and to look after children in need. After her studies, marriage, the birth of two children and several years of successful professional life in Mumbai, Kumari resigned and followed her mother's suggestion by founding the WIDE children's home in Tiruvannamalai with her husband Xavier. Since then, she has dedicated her life to the well-being of ‘her’ children and made it her mission to provide them with a familiar and loving home.

 

Kumari with one of the WIDE children
Kumari with one of the WIDE children

How we help

When Heike Yamuna became aware of the urgent need of the WIDE children's home in 2014, our organisation decided to help here too. Initially, it was a success that Kumari was spared the humiliation of regularly asking the greengrocers to give away overripe vegetables free of charge. Gradually, our organisation was able to attract more and more sponsors to cover the running costs and Kumari is now able to provide a home for 30 children. However, due to inflation and the ever more restrictive requirements of the authorities, in particular the prescribed minimum number of helpers, the costs continue to rise and so every euro is still needed to get the supplies up and running.

Rent for the girls' home

There are also always special challenges: Since 2020 (the Covid year of all years), the authorities have required separate accommodation for boys and girls in different houses. After a long search, a nearby house was finally found for rent, but the rent had to be paid in advance for 10(!) years. Thanks to generous donations from our sponsors, we were able to overcome this emergency situation.

Refurbishment of the WIDE bus

Transporting the children to school is also a major challenge, as there is no public school bus that could take the children to school 5 kilometres away. A second-hand bus has done its job for many years, but after 12 years of daily use at WIDE, breakdowns were the order of the day. Once again, some of our sponsors were extremely generous and made a general overhaul of the bus possible.

The WIDE children's home does not offer sponsorships. In Kumari's guiding principles, all children should be treated with equal care and none should receive special attention. All donations are precious and benefit all children equally. We therefore do not send individual letters of thanks to WIDE's sponsors from individual children. However, the children's community never tires of regularly expressing its gratitude to all Namaste Welfare sponsors in pictures or videos.

Help also comes from the Netherlands and France

The needs for daily life are largely covered by the sponsors of our organisation. Our organisation was also able to raise the rent for a girls' house and funds for the bus renovation. However, the foundations had already been laid when our organisation became aware of WIDE in 2015: The Dutch organisation ‘Support WIDE Children's Home Foundation’ had donated a house to the children's home and has been taking care of its maintenance ever since.

In addition, the French organisation ‘Espoir d'enfants’ is in the process of financing a new building for the children's home on a plot of land in the rural outskirts of Tiruvannamalai. Much is still uncertain here, but once the children's home has relocated, rental income from the current home could ease the financial situation somewhat.