Sanjay Dutt - Charity / Religiosity
Sanjay Dutt on December 17, 2006
with children who, successfully, underwent a drug rehab
Sanjay's Charity
"If you have it, give it." (Sanjay Dutt)
"When you're in trouble, turn to Munnabhai." (Sharin Wader)
"It's people like Sanjay who make our world a better place." (Achala Sachdev)
Sanjay does a great deal for many charitable purposes and goes out of his way when he can help people. Among other things, he works with patients suffering from AIDS, cancer and spastic paralysis. After Sunil Dutt's death he took on his father's legacy including his charitable institutions, e.g. the Nargis Dutt Memorial Foundation, founded by Sunil in memory of Nargis, which provides access to medical treatment for indigent cancer patients. He also supports the CPAA (Cancer Parents Aids Association); in this CPAA Newsletter you'll find a heartwarming report about how Sanjay fulfilled the last wish of a 16-year-old blood cancer patient. The NGO RareBloodGroops also can always rely on Sanjay and his support.
Understandably, an important concern to Sanjay is drug prevention and help for drug addicts. He supports the NGO SUPPORT (Society Undertaking Poor People's Onus for Rehabilitation), helping street children to get away from drugs, and is available as a consultant for drug addicts at any time. He doesn't shy away from talking in public about his drug phase, just to prevent other people from making the same mistake as he did respectively to give them the courage to fight their addiction - if he could make it, others can make it, too.
A photo from Stardust Annual 1997: Sanju plays with children
from the Akanksha Foundation, an NGO working with underprivileged
children in the slums to make them educated and self-raliant in life.
Sanjay has a great love for children. Often he visits orphanages and children wards in hospitals to play with the children, or he spontaneously invites them for a ride in his car. He also organizes events whose proceeds he provides to projects for children. Working for the NGO Support, he often invites drug-addicted street children to his home, and they just love their Sanju bhayya (or Munnabhai, as they also lovingly call him) and would do everything to be with him - even kicking drugs...
(Here you can find the heart-warming article "The Modern Messiah" from 1997 about Sanjay's work with slum children for the Akanksha Foundation.)
Another NGO Sanjay willingly became brand ambassador for is "Save the Children", founded by the late Vipula Kadri, mother of Mana (Sunil) Shetty: "The fact the Sanjay Dutt is very closely involved with many charitable causes is known to one and all. Adding yet another feather to his already impressive cap of social work, Sanjay Dutt would now be seen as the face of ‘Save the Children’." (IndiaFM, December 7, 2007)
