“What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” - Mother Teresa

A simple yet profound statement! We think there are more important factors in brokering peace. But it’s only through genuine love that peace is established. A love that begins right at home, where our identity is being formed. Let’s try and understand this through a few instances: love would never allow parents to abandon their children, and vice versa, no matter the justification; love would never allow hypocrisy, making us blind to our own faults while magnifying the faults of others; love is merciful and would never allow idle gossip and hearsay to dictate how we treat others; love would never allow us to destroy our beautiful environment for mere profit and selfish gain... and the list goes on. Love always brings out the best in us because it’s our highest calling. Only love can bring true peace.

Family makes our house a home!

On February 26, 2022, while celebrating 20 years of service to abandoned children with intellectual disabilities, we also inaugurated our new home for girls. We had talked about this project in newsletters in 2018, 2019, and 2021 appealing for funds. We never imagined a pandemic around the corner when we commenced this project. But, from experience we know that “life waits for a crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” Through the crisis of a pandemic and the economic chaos, a 13,168 sq. ft, child-friendly “residential cum rehabilitation” home evolved sheltering over 100 precious lives today. This is no ordinary home. It has a fully equipped medical center, physiotherapy and special education classrooms, a vocational training center, dormitories, restrooms, a centralized kitchen/pantry and dining room, and a recreation space. More importantly, it shelters a very large family!

Do visit sometime and see for yourself, but before you do, here’s the complete story with photographic evidence.

Family Connections: Special Mom Award 2020

Due to the pandemic, we could not host this wonderful program in 2020 and 2021. After getting the necessary permissions, we celebrated the fourth occurrence of our Special Mom 2020 Award on April 2, 2022, with a small gathering of well-wishers and friends at Hotel Quality Inn Sabari, Chennai.

Special thanks to our Chief Guest, Dr. C Aacha Arumugasamy, Founder and Director of Sri Kumaran Health Centre, Kolathur, Retteri, Chennai, Special Mom families, special guests, donors, sponsors, well-wishers, and friends for making our awards ceremony a grand success!

Introducing 15 incredible Special Moms each year inches us forward on our journey toward creating an inclusive society. It is said, "Water cuts through rock not because of its strength but because of its persistence." Sri Arunodayam's persistence in hosting this honorable program year upon year despite the many challenges we face, and special families living out their love for one another, persistently holding up a mirror to a love-starved society, will one day bring about the change we are all seeking. Sri Arunodayam faithfully plants through this program knowing that the harvest, when it comes, will be everything that we hoped it would be.

Be inspired by our Awardees' stories and films.

Family Connections: Special Mom Forum 2020

On April 1, 2022, we held our Special Mom Forum at Asha Nivas, 9 Rutland Gate, Thousand Lights, Chennai. To date, 60 Special Mom families are now part of Sri Arunodayam. The program commenced with lunch, followed by in-depth sessions of particular interest to families living with special children. At the Forum they get a chance to share about strategies that work and strategies that don’t. Many special moms are entrepreneurs, special school founders, and child advocates, and their experiences serve to help those who are still struggling to see a way forward. These families are transforming themselves and their communities in ways that are becoming hard to ignore. Here's a roundup of the 2020 Forum event and our aims and vision.

And yes, when you come to think of it, the whole world is a 'family of families' :)

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Sri Arunodayam is a secular organization with zero tolerance for discrimination against children regardless of religion, caste, race, ethnicity, disability or gender.