Run Entirely on Donations, a Gurugram Shelter Now Plans Room for 5,000

In Gurugram, the question of what happens to a destitute patient after discharge, or to a body no family claims, has for years had a single practical answer: The Earth Saviours Foundation.

The non-profit, founded in 2008 by Ravi Kalra and run since December 2021 by his son Jas Kalra, operates two shelter homes in Bandhwari and Mandawar villages in Haryana. Around 1,300 people live there full time: abandoned senior citizens, persons with mental illness or disability, patients with chronic conditions, and abuse survivors. According to the foundation, a large share of residents arrive through referrals from government hospitals, police stations, and district welfare departments rather than through the organisation's own street rescues.

That referral pattern is worth noting. It suggests the state's own institutions treat the foundation as infrastructure, a fallback where public shelter capacity in the National Capital Region falls short. Haryana's government-run shelter provision for the urban homeless remains limited relative to demand, and long-stay care for mentally ill destitute persons is scarcer still.

The foundation's model is unusual in that it charges nothing and takes no government funding for operations, relying on public donations to feed about 1,300 people daily and to cover medical costs. It also absorbs a function most institutions avoid: last rites for unclaimed bodies.

Jas Kalra took charge at 21, days after his father's death.

“We run entirely on what people choose to give, and there is no safety net beneath that. Caring for thirteen hundred people every day costs more than most would guess, and none of it is promised when the month begins. There is no government cheque waiting for us, no fund quietly earning interest in the background. We wake up each day already owing something to the people in our care, and we spend it looking for the means to make good on it. Some months the giving is generous, some months it is thin. But what I'm proudest of is that we have never turned away a person who was genuinely in need of support. My father always said that a helping hand doesn't need to know your name before it reaches for you, and our team lives by just that,” he said.

The organisation now plans a larger facility intended to house over 5,000 residents, which would make it, by the foundation's account, the largest free shelter home anywhere. Whether donation-led funding can sustain an operation of that size is the open question.

“I understand why people ask whether donations can carry something this large, and it is a fair question. My honest answer is that we have never had certainty, not at a hundred and thirty people, not at thirteen hundred, but we made it this far anyway. Compassion has proven a steadier currency than I once thought. If five thousand people need a roof, then the task is not to shrink the dream to fit the doubt, but to widen the circle of people willing to hold it up. I am not naive about the arithmetic. I simply refuse to let arithmetic be the last word on who gets to be cared for.