It is not just a fat packet that this home helps destitute women to accumulate, it also helps them go places, literally. One Home member, Nagalakshmi, is shortly leaving for England to work as a domestic help with a Tamil family. Her previous expeiences involves two years at Muscat and three years at Chennai.

Apart from buying jewels for her three daughters, whose education is being taken care of by the Home, she has Rs one lakh in her bank account. Nagalakshmi left her house with three children after being harassed by `a useless drunkard husband'.

Sarada (12) who boarded a train to Chennai from a town in Andhra along with her younger sister to escape from the grinding poverty at home, today works as a maid in the United States andher monthly pay cheque reads Rs 10,000. She has become an inseparable part of an Indian family there. And she manages to send Rs 2,000 every month to her parents.

A woman even purchased a plot of land recently and some others have married off their daughters,, something that was unthinkable five years ago.

Founded by K Raghupathi, state secretary of the Tamil Nadu NGO Federation, the Home has 1,000 women who are all working.

The children of these women are sent to schools and taken care of by the Service Home while their dependent parents are taken to associated Old Age Welfare Homes.

The Home has opened individual accounts in their names, says Jayalakshmi, who works in honorary capacity. No money is directly given to the women, Since all are `living maids', their food, shelter and clothing needs are taken of by their employer.

For their trips abroad, the Home gets them visas and also deposits adequate money with the Protector of Emigration office in the accounts of the women. In case of anemergency in the foreign land, the women can use the money to obtain their return air ticket. The women are also allowed a paid vacation after two or three years.

Jayalakshmi says the Home takes special care to cross-check credentials of the employer and the family abroad. And the employer is required to give local references here.

Of course, in this arrangement, there are bad days too. Instances of maids duping the employer and decamping with jewels and cash have come to light. The Home has removed such people off their register. On the other hand, when instances of maids being harassed have come to their notice, the maids have been relocated to work elsewhere.