Commencement of Social Work

Snehatheeram is a personal intiative of Sr. Roselin who has completed the Nursing Course from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. She served in several backward village areas and tribal regions in the North India and in many of the Mission Centers of the Church including Mumbai, Punjab and Chanda and also in Kashmir.

After returning to Kerala, Sr. Roselin served in Mental Health Centers at Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhicode and the Government Medical College at Thiruvananthapuram.  Her experience with poor mental patients of Mental Hospital at Peroorkada (Thiruvananthapuram) made a deep impact in her and encouraged her to select “Care of poor people” as her life’s mission. That was the major turning point in her life.  

During her service in North India she had seen the plight of poor women and children left alone with nobody to care for them and mentally derailed persons being thrown away to the streets. Such experience had created in her the deep rooted desire and determination to work for rehabilitating such persons. Working among such persons in different places in different circumstances gave her sufficient experience for taking care of them.

In the Mental Hospitals where Sr. Roselin had worked she could see the social stigma suffered by mental patients. Parents and other family members of persons cured of the illness often refused to accept them back and take them home. Such persons, particularly women, thrown out to the streets suffer all sorts of hardships, including physical torture and ill treatment from anti socials. With the deep desire to take care of such persons wandering in the streets and rehabilitating them to the maximum possible extent, Sr. Roselin started a small institution SNEHATHEERAM in Vilakkudi in Pathanapuram Taluk of Kollam District on 26th September 2002, with three inmates in a small house taken on rent. This house and the land surrounding it was later purchased and handed over to her by her siblings. Day to day affairs of Snehatheeram is managed by cooperation and contribution from well wishers.