responsibility

Empowering for Life 

This is the guiding principle of Gracious Home, a social organization in Chennai in Southern India. The home cares for "destitutes", who are people rejected by society.

Destitutes are old people without relatives, ill people without a home, street children and orphans without parents and dying people who are receiving no care.

More than 100 employees from NETZSCH Pumpen & Systeme GmbH in Waldkraiburg and a circle of private individuals have been supporting this social project for around three years in Chennai, the location of our NETZSCH Technologies India Private Ltd subsidiary.

NETZSCH representatives have visited Gracious Homes many times over that period. Mr. Thomas Netzsch, Dr. Otto Max Schaefer, Vivek Norman, Thomas Streubel, Bernd Murrenhoff, Michael Robby, Christoph Böhnisch, Felix Kleinert and, most recently, Bert Nowitzki, have all visited Gracious Home. Each has come back with their own positive impression of what Gracious Homes is achieving.

In 2004

Gracious Home was housed in a small rented house on the edge of the city. There were 20 boys and girls living in one room without their own beds. The room was used as their communal space during the day. There were two rooms for old men and women. There were sometimes people dying in the rooms.

In 2007

Gracious Home has acquired a large house near to the center of the city.

Almost 40 girls and boys have their own bed. There are separate dormitories for boys and girls. There is a quiet room providing opportunities for teaching and schoolwork. The children go to school regularly and start to think about jobs they might want to do – jobs these young people are really capable of achieving.

A large common room is the center of a lively communal life.

Old men and women have their own simple dormitories in the same building, away from the children. There are separate rooms for the dying, where they can be cared for in their final moments.

Summary

Gracious Home is now what it wanted to be – a place where people rejected by society can lead a life with dignity. The children have a future and the old and ill have a final resting place. They make up a large family with the carers at the home.

Other projects in the Chennai region are branching out from Gracious Home. There is systematic support for HIV prevention to stop the disease spreading and the associated distress of those infected and their relatives proactively.

The above donors with links to NETZSCH have so far gifted around 200,000 Euros to Gracious Home. The money covers a significant proportion of the costs of Gracious Home, in particular to purchase and run the home. On behalf of Gracious Home, Dr. Roseline Gagarin, the founder and Managing Trustee, thanks all the donors for their contribution, without which such changes would have been difficult or simply impossible.

Looking ahead

NETZSCH continues to support the home with donated funds directed at maintaining the building, the home and the care and education of the children.