Shavda-J J Colony is, by all means, a rural area and hosted the recently held Rural Games event. Though just within the Delhi municipality area limits, this village is hardly where any city dweller would visit. Except, for those who are displaced from the city due to large infrastructure projects coming up, and find refuge here.
It is in the 16 blocks of Shavda colony, where some of the least fortunate families in Delhi dwell— without proper healthcare, water or education facilities. And for GMR, the promoter of the Delhi airport, it is in four of these blocks, where it saw fit to start its CSR activities, even before it became a norm for companies.
For GMR, the initiatives had started in 2007, with sending water tankers to the communities displaced from around the Delhi airport and re-settled in Shavda, a place with a reputation of hard and distasteful ground water for drinking.
Today, the initiative has shaped up as the GMR Community Resource Centre of Excellence (CRC) in Shavda. A modest looking double-storey building on a meagre 60-square yard plot.
Though not much to look at, this small and colourful building has become a nerve centre for the toddlers, mothers, youth, adolescent and the aged, among the displaced community that resides here. The building was handed to the GMR Varalakshmi Trust by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, which used to occupy the building earlier.
With residents here hailing mostly from poor and remote parts of the country, physical disability is what ails most residents and even their children.
"Realising the need for doctors and educators to address the disabled, we started a physiotherapy centre, speech therapy and special school for disabled children. Today, there are about 500 disabled students coming here," said Brajesh Gupta, programme leader, GMR Varlakshmi Foundation.
The physiotherapy centre here also provides relief to the aged, other than those children with special needs. The GMR Varalakshmi Trust also houses here a pre-school for toddlers, post-school tuition centre for students of all class, and an adolescent training centre, where knowledge about growing up and staying safe is imparted.
For lactating and expecting mothers, the centre houses a nutrition centre, where healthy and nutritous food is administered under personal attention along with health tips to mothers.
"We have a strong focus here on improving health and hygiene. Nutrition deficiency was noticed among women here for long, so we have started with this nutrition centre recently alongside pregnancy and maternal counselling which we were already doing," Anukshya Konwar, programme officer, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation.
To support livelihood of the physically challenged residents here, the CRC extended support with IT infrastructure as well as logistics, to help people enroll for disability card, which entitles them to other benefits including a Rs 2,500 support from the social welfare department.
"This support means a lot for any family here. The feeling they get is that even their disabled child is supporting the family with this amount," said Konwar.
During THE WEEK's visit, students of all age groups were in the centre attending their classes in small but colourful and airy classrooms. The Centre's small backyard is where some sports activities and physical development activities for special children are held.
The centre also provides support to enroll for Aadhar, PAN and helps to avail support of social welfare schemes meant for the people here.
"I had started coming here initially with a knee pain. That was 10 years back. There on I got my bus pass, pension for me and my husband from here. Now my husband sells things on a rerhi (hand cart), which too was given to us from here," said Kesar Bai, 60, a resident here, saying why exactly the GMR CRC holds a special place for her.
Thanks to the CRC, other NGOs who seek to work with the displaced community here, relies on feedback and support for their programmes from the GMR CRC staffers.
Going ahead, GMR is committed to the development of the area and those displaced by its Delhi airport project. "We had aimed to work in four blocks where those displaced by us resides. But we realised that we must have the capacity to serve the entire community of all 16 blocks, or else we will not make a difference here," said Gupta.
"We are dedicated to bring in brighter days for all the communities re-settled from airport encroachments and create more and more life transforming stories," promised I. Prabhakara Rao, CEO, Delhi International Airport Ltd.
(This correspondent's visit to Shavda-J J Colony was facilitated by GMR)