Chennai

Not too keen on visiting orphanages in search of babies to adopt, they decided to keep an eye out for a child in need of a home and who better than a child with HIV AIDS. 

Having passed the message around to hospitals, NGOs and the like, they eventually came across a Transwoman who said that she had a trans child in need of a home in 2005 – a time when awareness about the community was severely lacking. 

He said that the biggest challenge started when he took the child to his office. People who regularly had lunch with him started avoiding him as the child was sitting next to him. 

This ignorance motivated Solomon to show people that it’s perfectly normal to live with HIV positive children and he went on to adopt a second child. Over the years, he adopted 47 HIV positive kids between the age two and 18 under his NGO ‘Shelter Trust’. 

He also employed HIV positive widows and commercial sex workers to take care of the kids because nobody else came forward. With funds being a great challenge, he works three jobs to earn extra money. 

His wife, too, works in a college. While the Juvenile Justice Act forbids children over the age of 18 to stay in homes, the couple is looking for more funds to help their children to complete education. 

Through a fundraiser on Milaap, he is now trying to raise funds to provide a healthy livelihood for these children who are suffering for no fault of theirs.

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