SUPPORT (Society Undertaking Poor People’s Onus for Rehabilitation), a voluntary Non-Governmental Organization registered as a Charitable Trust in Mumbai in 1985, was started by a few altruistic college youth who wanted to give back to the society.
For nearly four decades, SUPPORT has been actively working with street children and homeless youth in the field of prevention of drug addiction. It is one of the few NGOs in India that offer residential rehabilitation programs for street children and youth addicted to drug abuse, the most neglected segment of the society.
This issue urgently needed intervention because, in the absence of appropriate services/facilities, street children and youth had to be de-addicted from substance abuse so that their risk behaviour vis-à-vis crime on the streets could be eventually curtailed.
Most street children come from piteous backgrounds with horrifying stories of parental abuse, abject poverty, sexual abuse etc. driven by misplaced enthusiasm and lured by the razzle-dazzle of big cities. Some merely run away from their homes in far off villages, to strike it big. However, the moment they land on the streets in any metropolis, the tragic reality of the harsh life there dawns on them. Alone on the streets with no one to turn to and unable to return home, they quickly get into petty crimes to survive, and, eventually to drug abuse, before inevitably turning into potential threats to the society.
Our staff at SUPPORT identify such youngsters and help them to give up their drug addiction through the processes of awareness by counselling, treatment, de-addiction and rehabilitation. The rehabilitation programme offers them an alternative to street life by educating them and providing vocational skills, so that the youth can become clean and lead respectable and healthy lives in the mainstream of the society.
SUPPORT’s uncompromising dedication towards its goals of empathetic understanding, gentle counselling, medical healing, detoxification and rehabilitation ensures that such substance-abusing street children and homeless youth in Mumbai pull out from the abyss of desolation and destitution. Invigorated with renewed zeal and skilled in a useful trade, they enter the mainstream of the society as respectable individuals with dignity and purpose.
