In fact, Don Bosco Anbu Illam in Chennai is a home away from home for over 150 children like Gopi and Raju who are either deserted by the their parent or who have fled from their home. Started in 1995, Don Bosco Social Service Society has been picking up children abandoned on the streets in different cities of Tamil Nadu, helping them to get back to their own homes, providing them with a proper shelter, education and training in vocational skills so that when grown up they can find means for livelihood.

The society has set up the street-children shelter home in Chennai under its Elimination of Child Labour project. The society runs a similar project in Salem, too.

According to M Vincent Xavier, director, Don Bosco Anbu Illam, Salem, the main aim of the organisation is to send runaway children back home. But when the children refuse to go back home or when they don't have a home at all, Anbu Illam provides them with the shelter, education, health care and vocational training.

Don Bosco Anbu Illam keeps its door open 24 hours so that any child stranded on the streets can walk in anytime. "Some of the children on the streets, like shoe-shine boys, often come at night to play when others are sleeping because they cannot afford to play during the day, their earning hours," says Shiela, a social worker with Anbu Illam.

"There are many inmates in our shelter who spend their days and nights in trains, travelling for days for a living by cleaning or vending, but they return to the Illam after their trips," says Shiela.

For the rehabilitation of street children and youth, Anbu Illam workers first build a good rapport with the street children, like the rag pickers, porter boys at railway stations, shoe-shine boys, etc. Then they are brought to the shelter home where they are trained for alternative jobs like driving of autorickshaws and light vehicles. The Illam also conducts evening classes for the slum children and children of pavement dwellers. Under its project, the Illam also run street-based camps where children are gathered every day for recreation and non-formal education.

Don Bosco Anbu Illam gets assistance from the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment and it carries out the disbursements of the ministry's scheme for the welfare of street children in Chennai. About 300 children have so far directly benefited from these scheme.

Over the last 12 months, workers of Don Bosco Anbu Illam have contacted 357 children who have run away from their homes and were found doing odd jobs at bus stands, railway stations, tea stalls, hotels and in hazardous workshops. In the future, Don Bosco Anbu Illam plans to open 10 other centres in other cities in Tamil Nadu to provide such children a home away from home.