From helping fund surgeries to setting up a playroom in the hospital, this NGO is helping little children smile

The tiny girl in blue pajamas and carelessly held together plaits in ribbons is not letting the boy use the indoor swing. A volunteer steps in. Tells her politely that sharing is a nice thing. She agrees, but says the boy must not play on the swing for more than 10 minutes. She adds that he also needs to stop sulking all the time. They have a pact. The playroom has teddy bears, little cycles.

There are pretty looking dolls in different clothes. Images on notebooks come alive with sketch pens of all colours in the world. Some children are drawing on chart papers. One, for reasons best known to him, wants a page out of our diary. He sits down to draw. He has already congratulated himself loudly, and applauded himself even before starting work.

A bunch of women are chatting with children who are pretending to be attentive to explore the 1,500 book library inside the area. We are inside the playroom, set up by Nanhi Jaan at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI's) Advanced Pediatrics Centre in Chandigarh. Many children who are playing here have tubes attached to their bodies. Some are drowsy.

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Some are sitting in their wheelchairs, watching others play. Sandeep S. Chhatwal says most of them are very sick. Sometime during the conversation, he makes a remark-cutting-edge science and hope is a brilliant combination. Dr Chhatwal does not work in PGI.

But he and his volunteers are often in the playroom they have set up. As the founder of Project Nanhi Jaan under the Veeran Wali Foundation, which he established in the memory of his late grandmother in 2005, he has already donated two ventilators, six baby warmers, six phototherapy machines, ABG analysers, three crash carts and one centrifuge to PGI and Government Medical College and Hospital 16 hospitals.

"The foundation started with the aim of supporting education for the underprivileged and to help orphan girls. In 2010, a close relative was admitted to PGI for a serious ailment. I witnessed the doctors do everything they would to bring him back. He was saved. It was now time for me to give back something to the institution," says the doctor, himself an MD gold medalist who runs the successful Omni Clinics and Diagnostics in Chandigarh's Sector 34.

"I really don't know what to say when you ask about the satisfaction I get from this. All I know is Nanhi Jaan touches 500 lives of children through the equipment and other things it has donated," says Dr Chhatwal. The 46-year-old head of the organisation, which has also facilitated funds for more than 50 surgeries of children, insists that whatever he has achieved would not have been possible without the volunteers and regular donors.

Besides this, Nanhi Jaan also supports other organisations with clothes and langars that are organised in Tricity's slum areas. Talking about village Masol, near Nayagaon in Punjab, which they have adopted, Dr Chattwal remembers, "When we first went there, we were shocked to see that children there didn't even have shoes and proper clothes. It was as if we were in a famine stuck area.

We now provide the children with clothes, food, regular healthcheck ups and study material." The doctor is excited about his future plans. "We want to completely revamp the pediatrics wing at Government Medical College in Sector-32. At present, we are identifying their needs-machinery, logistics and medicines."

At this time, when many major corporates have active CSR, does it not make sense that NGOs partner with them in a way that is beneficial to both? "Precisely, we have already facilitated six phototherapy units and four baby warmers from corporates for a hospital. Besides, another corporate has agreed to donate medical equipment worth Rs 35 lakhs under its CSR programme." By the way, the child who borrowed the page from us did show us what he had drawn with a florescent sketch pen-image of him on the bed and a nurse handing him a yellow balloon.