On January 25, 1979, the SOS Children’s’ Villages of India, Chatnath Homes, opened its first three homes with a mother and three children in each. The first seeds of the SOS orphanage in Tambaram were sown nearly ten years earlier when Mr. K Gopalakrishne, an eminent industrialist and philanthropist in Chennai, started a public charitable trust called the Chatnath Trust to give financial help to the poor and the needy. In the last years of his life, Mr.  

Gopalakrishne saw the purchase of the land that has today become a thriving SOS community.Although he passed away before the establishment of the village, his grandchildren, Mrs. Uma Narayanan and Mr. S. Muthikrishnan, along with their father K.V. Srinivasan, made the dream a reality with the SOS Children’s Village model. The plan soon crystallized after discussion with Mr. J.N. Kaul, the General Secretary of SOS Children’s Villages of India. 

Tsunami Update Click Here

           The initial objective- to have 15 houses in clusters of five (like the five fingers of a hand) with 10 children and a mother in each home.The trustees designed the village to be as eco-friendly and self-sufficient as possible, with a solar powered photovoltaic system providing power for lights and fans, a windmill drawing water from the well, and a small cattle farm with machinery to produce cooking gas from cow dung. The architect, Mr, Bharath, who offered his services free of charge, designed the homes around the numerous trees already existing on the plot of land. Because not a single tree was cut down in the construction process, the village kindles a mature, natural environment for the cultivation of a healthy community.

                By 1981, two clusters with a total of ten homes had been completed. On January 25, 1982, Mr. Saddiq Ali, former Governor of Tamilnadu, and Ms. Gamothi Srinivasan, Minister for Social Welfare, participated in official Dedication Ceremonies. This event also marked the first visit of Mr, Hermann Gmeiner, President of SOS International.

Since then, the Village has had the good fortune of playing host to several dignitaries- Mrs. Janaki Venkataramam and Mr. R. Venkataraman, the former President of India; Mr. C. Subramaniam, Ms. Gomathi Sreenivasan, Mr. Soundaarajan, former Minister Ms. Valarmathi, Mr. Udayamoorthy, Ms. Sivasankari, a popular Tamil writer; Ms. Sonal Mansingh and the Dhananjayan artists, to name a few. The Village is very proud of its young history and looks forward to creating many new legacies as it grows and matures into the future.