Some more good news from the Heal Village which give an idea of the activities our children are involved with at school.
Firstly, a Heal Village team won the State Level karate tournament and demonstrates the hard work they have been putting in.
Also, two of our children were winners in a painting competition held on the occasion of World Water Day with the topic ‘Water For Life’.
Hamanth:
Venkata Rao:
Well done children!
Heal October 2009 Progress
The time of our departure to India on November 2nd rapidly approaches. What seemed a long time has shot past! Now there is excitement in the air as we contemplate meeting the five children we are sponsoring and the ten who are now supported by your JustGiving donations – Thank You!
Then on top of that we will be visiting the planned site of Heal’s biggest project to date, the new village and school at Vijayawada. A very generous sponsor has given this project a real kick start, Thank You!
All our fingers are now crossed for the land purchase to go ahead without a hitch. Visit Google Earth 16o 38’ 49.00” N and 80o 47’ 31.00” E.
The mollusc shape (below) is the main building of the Heal Village in Guntur, where we will be in November. Visit Google Earth 16 o 15’ 00.00” N and 80 o 19’ 24.00” E.
‘Sukhamu’ to you all!
John Broadhurst is one of the trustees of Heal UK and will be visiting our projects for the first time. We look forward to including more of John and Arlene’s progress reports.
The following message was written by Kirsty Erskine a volunteer from the UK who spent over four weeks at the Heal Children’s Village in Guntur during the summer of 2009. Having recently completed a Fine Art degree, she was able to put her art skills to good use with the very eager children.
The Heal Village truly is a little bit of magic hidden in India. I have been so touched by the welcoming and caring nature of the children and adults and have never before felt such a huge energy of warmth and kindness emanate from a place.
I think that what all the members of the Heal organisation do is quite incredible, and the best bit about it is that it works. It is easy to see in the children’s faces and eyes how happy they are. It is difficult to imagine some of the circumstances they have been through due to their happy and positive attitudes.
One thing that struck me the most when I arrived was the way they play together, never any fighting or crying, and if one child falls over he or she merely laughs and continues playing. I can see it is a way of preparing them for the bumps and falls in life and I think it is unique and brilliant.
The children all enjoy their work and it is evident that they try their best at most things. They all have fantastic ambitions of becoming doctors or engineers and it is thanks to Heal that these dreams have been made possible. The nature, kindness and warmth of the children are a direct reflection of the amazing people who care for and support them.
I feel honoured to have been part of such a place and to have had the amazing opportunity to spend time with certainly the kindest and most generous people I have ever come across. Leaving the village was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It amazes me still the overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude that the children have. They accept people for who they are and are happy just for you to be there. They ask for nothing and instead try to give you any of the few things they own in the hope that it might make you happy.
I am already saving up for my next visit. Not a day goes by when their smiling faces don’t pop up in my mind, and I simply cannot wait to see them again.
Kirsty Erskine
Update for the cyclists taking part in Cycle India 2010:
During our recent trip to India, Dr Prasad and I visited the Coorg area to check out the route for Cycle India. We travelled with a group of people including Nitin, the organiser of Cycle India, and Dr Siva (one of the organisers of the 2008 event who is helping and taking part again).
There will be a number of amendments to the initial Cycle ride itinerary. I’ll ask Nitin to send me an update to add to the website, but in the meantime, the main alterations I will discuss below.
We didn’t visit Mysore which will be the place we spend our first night in India, so I can’t comment on the accommodation, but have been assured it is a decent hotel and Nitin has organised for sightseeing etc after our journey from Bangalore. We will also be introduced to our bikes, which Nitin is hoping will be ‘Firefox’ bikes, which crucially will have gears (and brakes).
For day one of the cycling, we’ll travel by coach to the starting point which will be around 1.5 hour journey. The following picture shows the starting point, which will be near a small school and on the edge of a village:
The beginning of the bike ride is pretty flat, and the road is very quiet which will help us all get used to the bikes.
I do need to stress that the overall event is a lot hillier than Cycle India 2008, and Day 1 will be the toughest day. We’ll be climbing to Madikeri which is around 3,500 ft above sea level, from a starting point of around 2000 ft above sea level. There are no steep climbs, but there are a few long gradual climbs we will need to overcome. Siva is going to revisit the Coorg in the next couple of months and cycle the first day just to make sure it is not too tough.
We’ll be staying in the Hotel Crystal Court at the end of Day 1 and day 2. The following webpage gives you an idea: http://www.nivalink.com/crystalcourt/index.html. It is quite basic, but clean and tidy and should OK for the two nights.
Madikeri is the main town in the Coorg, and is on the top of a hill, so the good news is that days 2-4 are mostly downhill, although it is undulating in parts. I must stress that everyone needs to make sure they are reasonably fit, and not just turn up without having done a bit of exercise (like I did last time 
). If anybody finds any of the hills a bit tricky, then there’s always the option of pushing the bikes for a bit, or if the going is really tough then the coach will be available.
The advantage of cycling through the Coorg is the fantastic scenery:
The roads are on the whole pretty good, although there will be a few pot holes to navigate in places:
During Day 2, we’ll visit Abbey Falls which we visited this time. With the monsoon weather, the scene was very dramatic, although I understand there will still be plenty of water in January:
At the end of Day 3, we’ll be staying near to the Dubbare Elephant sanctuary. With it being Monsoon season, much of the Coorg was flooded while we were there, and the area close to where we are staying at the end of Day 3 was no exception:
There’s around six cottages at this location, so each cottage may house around 4 people each. It may be that the guys may need to be in tents on this night, or in a dormitory style if there’s a large room.
At the end of Day 4, we’ll be staying in an old Coorg house with real rustic charm courtesy of a retired army general. There are a few rooms in the main house, but most of the group will be housed in a dormitory area in the following building:
Originally, we were planning having a Day 5 of cycling, but we’ve decided to cut this out of the programme so the bike ride will be shorter than 190 miles. The main reason for cutting Day 5 is it will create time to visit the Heal Children’s Village in Guntur.
We’ll travel back to Bangalore and spend the night at the Green Valley Resort (see http://www.travelguru.com/india-hotels/bangalore-hotel-green-valley-resorts.html) instead. Then, the next day, we’ll fly to Vijayawada so that we can visit the village. During Cycle India 2008, we cycled to the village, and it was the highlight of the event for most people. We feel it is important for all the cyclists taking part to meet the kids, and see where all the fundraising is being spent.
We may also visit the location of some land Heal is trying to purchase near Vijayawada where we hope to build our biggest ever project – a new model residential school for 1000 orphaned and underprivileged children. If everything goes to plan, then we may have a ceremony at the land to formally lay the foundation stone, before building starts.
The money we raise from Cycle India will be used to help build the school, so the more we raise, the better facilities for the children. The location is very picturesque at the side of a hill and bordering a lake (although it is dried up on this picture):
After spending the afternoon with the children, we’ll take an overnight sleeper train to Hyderabad for our final day in India.
Initially, the idea was for this day to be an opportunity to hold a press conference with the local and national media (there will be a lot of interest in India for our bike ride) and the chance for a bit of shopping.
However, we are looking into the idea of spending an hour or two cycling around the Hussain Sagar Lake (visit http://happyhyderabad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/hussainsagar.jpg) which will create a lot of publicity for Heal. If we do organise this, then it will be an opportunity for a few VIPs from Hyderabad to join us cycling.
Conclusion
Hopefully, I haven’t frightened anyone when I mentioned the hilly terrain. During Cycle India 2008 we cycled around 250 miles, whereas this time we’ll be cycling around 160 miles over 4 days. Also, we’ll have better bikes this time, so I’m confident we’ll all be OK.
There will be quite a bit of travelling also, so everyone needs to be prepared for a busy schedule. Once Nitin has fully amended the itinerary then I’ll update everyone.
Matthew Glover
Head of Fundraising
For more information about Cycle India please email:
matthew@conservatoryoutlet.co.uk
Great news from the Heal Children’s Village, and Poverty Trap project in Guntur.
Our Heal children achieved very good grades in the SSC public examinations, with 43 children out of 46 achieving first classes and the remaining three children achieving second classes.
Mr P.Srinivasulu of our Nandana Rural School who is under Poverty Trap Scheme scored the top – 566 marks out of 600. This is 94.33% and 21 of our children achieved at least 500 marks.
These excellent results have been achieved through the hard work of the children and teachers – well done to you all.
Many of these children would never have had the opportunity to receive such an education without the financial support of Heal. For just £7.50 per month you can sponsor one of our children under the Poverty Trap scheme at Guntur to receive an education.
Greetings.
Easter tells the resurrection of Lord Jesus giving new hope and strength to his believers and followers. Easter comes in spring season bringing new life to the nature. As Easter symbolizes new hope and life – you people, with great love, affection, concern and kindness to the needy are giving a ray of hope, confidence and courage to surpass the difficulties traveling towards a new world.
How can we thank you except wishing you and your families a happy, healthy, prosperous and peaceful long life!
With lots of love,
Your children at HEAL.
We are delighted to announce that our Heal children have been working hard with their karate practice and it has been rewarded by the team winning the championship at the recent State level tournament.
Well done to all the children who clearly worked so hard!
I spent the whole of February 2009 at HEAL and the Bala Kuteer School opposite. It was the most amazing time, and I would recommend it to anybody. In particular, everyone was overwhelmingly welcoming, cheerful and generous towards me. I spent most of my time helping in the school, and offer the following observations to HEAL and to any future visitors.
There are about 200 resident children, and a further 600 day students. The children study incredibly hard. As the exams approach, their day runs from 4:30am to 11:00pm, and it is common to see them sitting in groups round a single lamp outside, late at night, murmuring revision subjects to themselves. Fortunately, volunteers are not expected to keep up with this schedule! The official school day begins at 9:45am with assembly, and ends at 4:30pm.
The children have simple tastes and are easily pleased. They all want to greet their visitors at all times, whenever and wherever they are seen, with a “Good morning Uncle!” shouted from all directions as you walk around. They want to know if you know any magic tricks (it’s a good idea to have on ‘up your sleeve’!); if you’ll watch them launching their spinning-tops; if you’ll play a ball game or, more bizarrely, show them your biceps! And do you know Freddie Flintoff, seeing that you’re from England?
Days in school were filled with helping in English lessons, especially with pronunciation, and it was a help to ensure that a teacher stayed in the room, as the kids would get excited to have a visitor, and be less disciplined as a result. If you’re an experienced teacher, you’ll be able to deal with this yourself. I’m not, but found that lessons with a local teacher present were a delight. Don’t forget that you’re an expert in spoken English, and the children (and staff) need to speak in English with you as much as possible, to improve their clarity, grammar and pronunciation. You could take CDs or cassettes of a ‘talking book’ or stories for children, but DVDs from the UK (region 2) don’t work in India.
The younger children enjoy singing nursery rhymes (which is a means of learning English) but they aren’t particularly musical, and love it when you go along and sing something properly. Music is an area which needs to be developed. There are three small Casio keyboards, but no-one plays any instruments, and the children have little concept of melody or pitch. Take a CD of songs for children. If you’re a guitar player, it’s worth going to the trouble of taking it. The school might be able to find one locally, but it’s not likely to be in good condition.
The Indians have a principle of treating their guests as ‘gods’. There is endless food and kindness. Meals are brought to your room, but I found it better to eat with the children whenever possible, sitting on the floor in the HEAL dining room. The kids loved the attention, and the fact that I was becoming one of them. After supper, reading a bed-time story (there are some in the library, but take your own!) was really appreciated. A house-mother or senior pupil will help to translate the story into Telugu for the little ones.
There is one broadband connection in the school office, and it’s usually available for keeping in touch with friends and family after 4:30, or during the day for more official use.
While the children are uninhibitedly friendly, I found some of the staff to be a bit awe-struck with a visitor – especially one who is treated like a god! It would be a good idea to ask for a teacher-buddy to be appointed who can help to break through that barrier. The Indian custom is for the sexes to be kept separate in a very ‘proper’ way. The boys and girls sit on separate sides of the classroom, eat at separate ends of the dining room and don’t play together. A volunteer befriending staff of the opposite sex will not meet with approval, and the school have decided not to allow mixed groups of unmarried volunteers to stay. That aside, I can’t express how kind everyone is.
Here are some recent photographs from the Heal Children’s Village showing how happy the children are when they receive gifts from their sponsors.
There’s also a nice image of some of our boys enjoying some modern dancing at the Sri Venkateswara Bala Kuteer School.
If you would like to make a real difference to one of our children please consider sponsoring a child.
Visit to Heal 27th – 30th January 2008
Report from Adele and Albert Alcock:
Albert and I first visited Heal Children’s Village in 2006 and the happy memories of that visit stayed with us and encouraged us to start to save up straight away to visit again and finally at 4pm on the 27th January 2008 we arrived at Vijayawada airport. Vijayawada is approx 60km from the Children’s Village. Vijayalakshmi (sponsorship secretary) and George (Vijaya’s husband) had offered to meet us at the airport and transport us to Heal. Meeting Vijaya and George again was brilliant as we had spent time with them on our previous visit and had stayed in touch via email ever since.
The journey on India’s roads is not for the faint hearted but surprisingly once you get used to the constant honking of horns and pot holes on the roads you learn to sit back and enjoy the ride – all the drivers we experienced were excellent!
The journey to Heal took us 1.5hours and we were met on arrival by Dr Manga Devi, it was wonderful to meet this remarkable lady again.
Dr Manga Devi organised a lovely meal for us and we caught up with the latest developments at the village. Getting used to using fingers to eat rather than knives and forks takes a bit of practice especially when you are eating curry and rice!
We were also introduced to Kirsty Brodie who had been working as a volunteer at the village since arriving earlier in the month after taking part in the Cycle India sponsored bike ride from Hyderabad.
The following morning before going for breakfast we sat outside the guest apartment to take in the peace and tranquillity of the campus and watch the children going by to carry out their early morning tasks. Whilst doing this Hafisa (our eldest sponsored child age 14 yrs) arrived with her friend to greet us – it was so good to see her again and we couldn’t get over how much she had grown up and also overcome the shyness we had seen at the previous visit. At breakfast we met up with Kirsty again and we made plans to visit the two schools on the campus – The English Medium School and The Telegu School. There are children from Heal at both schools.
We started off by watching the morning assembly at the English Medium School then following that after encouragement from Hafisa and her friend went to watch the year 9 students morning karate class – or so we thought but all three of us where dragged in to participate!!!!!!!!! Whilst this was happening Marudhvathi, Co-ordinating Officer, arrived to greet us and arranged for our us to meet for the first time our younger sponsored child – 5 yr old Ambedkar – his smile was just beautiful and whilst he couldn’t speak/ understand much English Hafisa and Marudhvathi translated. Both children were then given some time away from their morning lessons to accompany us around the Teleguise school and to allow us to have some quality time with them. We visited the Toy Library and met some of the pre-school children, played with them for a while and made our minds up that before we left we would arrange to buy some new tricycles as the existing ones in the library where past their best. We also visited some of the other younger children and they recited nursery rhymes for us and we watched as they played games such as their version of ‘Simon says’ and musical chairs.
Maraudhvathi explained that they had an ongoing project on the campus to train teachers and there was to be a seminar later that afternoon where the trainees would benefit greatly from being able to talk to us and ask us questions around our culture and the education system etc in the England if Albert, Kirsty and I where agreeable – we said of course but we hadn’t bargained for being asked individually to stand up and make a speech!!!!!!!!!
Later that evening we went to visit the Heal children at their cottages and everyone wanted to hold your hand or play thumb wars with you ( a game introduced to them by Kirsty) and when they saw the camcorder they all wanted their photo taken then playing back to them. Everyone was trying to talk to us at once all trying to practice their English – as they were supposed to be studying we kept our visit brief and promised to see them all again the next day.
The next day we spent some more time with Hafisa and Ambedkar before they went to school. We then went into the schools again for a while before going to Vijaya & George’s home for lunch. It was nice to be able to sit and chat and look through the photo albums recording various events that had happened at Heal. Before returning to Heal we managed to find a toy shop in Guntur to purchase a couple of tricycles for the nursery children – 500 rupees for two (approx £6 sterling!!!!!!!!) Albert got some strange looks as he walked down the main street in Gunter carrying them. We then spent the evening with Marudhvathi sorting out the gifts we had brought from England for the children as it had been arranged for us to see all the Heal children together before school the following morning to distribute everything.
Our final day at Heal arrived too quickly – after breakfast we went to meet with the Heal children outside their cottages.
They were all sat spick and span in their school uniforms waiting for us. As we arrived they all started waving and clapping the site brought tears to our eyes!
After speaking to the children and encouraging them to continue to work and play hard and take care of each other we then, with the help of Kirsty and some of the older children, distributed small gifts to each child, ensuring each child got a lollipop and then another small item – balls, stickers or puzzles for the younger boys, hair bands, slides and clips for the girls with coloured pens, pencils or crayons for the older children. Marudhvathi then showed the children the books and DVD’s we had also brought for them all to share. The sheer joy you see on the children’s faces when they receive the smallest of gifts is a pleasure hard to imagine without experiencing it yourself. Photos and camcorder footage again taken in abundance and everyone crowding round wanting to see the pictures. Too soon it was time for the children to go to school so we said our goodbyes and arranged for Hafisa and Ambedkar to come to the guest apartment at lunchtime so that we could say our goodbyes to them before we left for our afternoon flight back to Hyderabad.
Through out our stay where ever we went children would be coming up to us wanting to talk to us, hold our hands, show us different things. The House Mothers made our meals brought us drinks and snacks and generally looked after us – we couldn’t have wished to have been better looked after and we were very sad to have to leave and hope to be able to visit again in the future.
Adele & Albert Alcock
21st February 2008
