JSK History

The Jeevan Sahara Kendra started up in 2002 after Dr. Stephen Alfred attended Prescription for Hope an international conference of Christians concerned about the challenge of HIV/AIDS.

Upon Dr. Stephen’s return to India, he called together a group of concerned local Christians and suggested that working together to reach out to people with HIV/AIDS here in the greater Mumbai area.

The name ‘Jeevan Sahara Kendra’ was suggested by Pastor Basil DeSouza of Covenant Blessings Church – and work started later in the year with two young men visiting people with HIV in their homes in Thane.

At the end of 2002 Dr. Sheba Eicher joined the programme which at that point had Sister Naomi Nathan and Daniel Kautikkar as staff.   From the very first few families that were contacted, the work has slowly grown to a full-fledged HIV home-care programme.

Early days saw the development of a small out-patient clinic and forays into providing Anti-Retroviral Therapy for patients – of which the first patient to recieve the treatment is still going strong as we write this 5 years later.

The earliest days were also marked with a desire to train lay people from local churches to reach out to people with HIV/AIDS with the practical love of God.

In 2004 the first steps were made to start a back-up shelter for acutely ill patients with HIV.

Early 2005 saw Jeevan Sahara Kendra organising the There is Hope conference for churches from North India.  The response was tremendous and reminded us of what can be done by God’s people when they want to make a change.

The programme was strengthened in late 2005 by the arrival of Dr. Adam Black, a volunteer physician from Scotland who served with us till mid-2008.

Though primarily an HIV home-based-care programme, JSK has always sought to reach out to the community.  The World AIDS Day – held on the 1st of December each year – offers a vital opportunity to do this.   In 2004 JSK helped organise a silent prayer rally through the streets of Thane.  In 2005 we linked in with the Global Day to Pray to End AIDS and organised a prayer meeting.  In 2006 our interns helped spur the thought of a programme to reach out to young people, and the Youth Against AIDS festival was born.  This programme has now taken a life of its own with the 2007 edition of the YAA Fest being held at St. John’s School in Thane.

As the programme has continued to grow deeper in relationships with families affected by HIV, we have been struck by the needs of children of families affected by AIDS.  Rather than send them to orphanages, JSK is convinced that they should be able to grow up in their home environment as much as possible.  To help facilitate this, we started a small Child Care Centre in 2006 to support families with HIV in the Lokmanya Nagar part of Thane.

Our latest endeavour is to start an integrated counselling and testing centre (ICTC) to help people who may have HIV know about their status.  We have rennovated our existing clinic and are now able to counsel and test people for HIV at the JSK clinic itself.