Normally my attitude to causes is that one’s as good as another (although the charities acting on them vary) and this is still true of, say, a fiver. However, for a big donation its different: having just stayed at a couple organisations in India I feel morally obliged to advise someone to give them money and you, dear reader, are that person (or maybe even you, dear readers, are those people… maybe not).
The first is Little Flower Mercy Home near Munnar (www.mercyhome88.org). Little Flower is a common name for institutions in India – can anyone tell me why? Anyway, this home started out for destitue and usually physically or mentally disabled men and later expanded to take women and children. Its resources are stretched as a result: it has so many men that it must now turn others away. The men have some truly horrifying conditions: one has only a single deformed hand, another a back injury so severe he must lie on a water-filled bed all day. These men also have nothing to do (except pray and they do that for literally hours every day). Skin conditions are all treated the same way: hydrogen peroxide followed by some kind of lotion. The children also have little to do, with poor play equipment and little space to use it, although at least they have sleeping space. Not all are sponsored. The Home wants to buy a field for them to play in and build a new men’s home and kitchen, as the old one trapped smoke( also a chapel, barber house, office… its management might be slightly over-ambitious). If you can’t find a way to donate directly (the website is confusing) try giving money to CHIKS (www.chikschildrenshomes.org/), which supports it and 3 other homes which probably need support just as badly.
Far removed by both geography and circumstance is Reaching the Unreached (www.rtuindia.org), a collection of children’s villages in Tamil Nadu. These children are kept in families of around 8, cared for by a widowed or destitute mother (Little Flower’s children live in a dormitory) in a private house. 1 or 2 are usually the mother’s biological children. Relatives outside may visit once a month. These children continue to be supported by RtU until married or financially secure. RtU has schools and a clinic for these children and others who live nearby – many people use the clinic. RtU provides all sorts of other services to nearby villages such as building houses, digging wells, sponsoring poor households and providing science lessons for local schools that lack the necessary equipment (and, say, desks. The children are very diciplined, though). They educate women on their rights, teach female drop-outs (50% of whom alledgedly go on to higher education) and have vocational training (e.g. tailoring) for those with no other method of earning income. They too need money: they were preparing a third mobile school science lab and building a new, erm, building while I was there (and, of course, more money is always needed to build houses etc.). They do basically everything except care for disabled children (which they can’t) and they were at one point partnering with a local surgeon to help them.
Well, that’s it. If anyone is swayed by this article, please let me know. It would be nice to feel I’ve made a difference (besides my own donations, of course).
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