Keep a Child Alive

Day 4 - Sridevi: A Picture of Poverty

Keep a Child Alive began supporting the work of Sahara Aalhad in Pune, India last year, and we are proud to have already provided treatment, care and support for 560 patients and their families!

When KCA President Leigh Blake visited Sahara in December 2010, the Executive Director, Elizabeth Selhore, took Leigh and her team into a nearby slum where they met Sridevi and her family. Sridevi is 21 years old and cares for her three younger sisters, her younger brother, and three children of her own. She had an arranged marriage to her uncle, and when her father died from AIDS, her grandfather also moved into her household.

In 2004, Sridevi’s mother, one of Sahara’s beneficiaries, also died from AIDS and Sridevi was forced to become the head of the household. The eldest of her younger sisters was married off to ease the burden, and with the help of Sahara Aalhad, her two other sisters were enrolled in a government school with a hostel, so they no longer needed to live at home. However, her brother Ganesh was refused admission because he is HIV positive. At age 16, he weighed only 88 pounds. He is currently staying at the Sahara Aalhad Care Home so the team can oversee his medical treatment and care.

As the sole breadwinner for her family, Sridevi earns a pittance of $36 a month working as a housemaid. Her grandfather is usually home to watch her younger children while she is at work during the day, but sometimes she is forced to leave them unsupervised, which is very worrying. With a husband who drinks all the time and seldom works, Sridevi bears the burden of earning enough for her entire family to survive on as well as the responsibility of maintaining the home they all live in.

With Keep a Child Alive support, Sahara Aalhad has initiated a community-based health care program, that provides nutrition to Sahara’s neediest beneficiaries. Sridevi and her family are the first recipients of this program, and in tribute to Sridevi’s selfless struggle against all odds for her family’s survival, Sahara has named the program, “Project Sridevi.”

Your support for KCA has made Project Sridevi at Sahara possible.

Sridevi’s story, one of KCA’s grantees, is another reason why we do what we do at Keep a Child Alive. Text BUYLIFE to 90999 to give $10 to help us continue these daily inspirational stories of hope, love and strength.

See all of our Daily Inspirations.