The young people that come to shuktara abandoned, lost or having run away from their families come to us with no paperwork. Often the term "unknown boy" or "unknown girl" is used by the Police, Hospitals or Government agencies dealing with lost children.
The first thing we do at shuktara is give them a name, by enabling them to choose or if they are non verbal showing them signs for different names. They have no birth certificate, no known date of birth, no name and no known place from where they have come apart from having been found alone on the streets.
The Aadhaar card is a 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Indian government to every individual resident of India. Yesterday Pappu (the chairman of shuktara) along with a team of our staff took the girls who do not have this ID to REACH school where they took digital fingerprints of all 10 fingers and eye retina pattern as well as a photo of the individual.
Yesterday Moni and Prity completed this work and Puja along with Guria will be done next after we enrol them in REACH school where most of our young people have attended either in their Cerebral Palsy, Special Education or Deaf Units.
It is a great achievement as we celebrate International Womens Day 2017 in the knowledge that all the girls and young women who live at Lula Bari our girls home here in Kolkata will have a name, an identity and a home for life. #IWD2017