These kids begin their day at 5.45 am, make their beds, prepare their breakfast and dress in their school uniforms ready to sing at mass at Daddy’s Home premises at Gogol-Borda. There are twenty five kids at the residential center and in total over 94 special children who come together daily at the Daddy’s Home School to cook, bake, learn housekeeping, clean and study.
Setup in 1989 with just 12 kids, this has been the toil of Fr Vamiki Dias who put up an institute of this kind 25-years ago. “I once met a child with Down Syndrome aimlessly roaming the streets and asked him why he didn’t go to school and he replied saying nobody took him to school. Those words struck me very hard and that’s how I began Daddy’s Home,” explains Fr Valmiki.
With no venue and shifting from makeshift homes and flats let out by people, Fr Valmiki finally bought land and built his own space where the school is currently housed since the year 2000 and eight years ago, Fr Valmiki began the residential center to keep girls and boys overnight with him so that they could be independent and learn to do daily chores despite their disabilities.
“We have with us Down syndrome kids from an age group of 10 years to 55 years and they come here so dependent on their parents and can do nothing. So we train them to do things for themselves. They’ll make a train and take the new inmate into the loo or weave him or her into their lifestyle and teach them everything,” he asserts.
As founder of the place, he invites us to the school on canteen day, which is once a month and the kids cook themselves and send out the cookies or bhajji to all the school kids and have a field day.
The school under the aegis of Fr Valmiki along with his thirteen teaching staff have never held back the students and have taken them to popular restaurants like Zeebop, a boat cruise on the Mandovi, to a hospitality management college, movies at theatres, tiatrs and fast food chains and people have always been surprised as to how well behaved the children have been.
“We have individualized attention for them. They sit on round tables and there’s always a sense of touch when they get distracted. If they can manage we even send them to open schools to take exams for further studies,” explains Fr Valmiki.
Daddy’s Home has Joseph Fernandes who just missed the bus to go for the Special Olympics and represent India in table tennis but he wants to try again. Many other kids and adults from Borim, Benaulim, Chandor, Cortalim and even Bombay find a home in Fr Valmiki’s initiative where he himself stays and spends every moment with his special friends.
