If you’re considering sponsoring one of our older Heal children then this is a typical update provided by one of our children, NagaLakshmi Gadiparthi including pictures:
Dearest Brother Ramanna Anna,
How are you? I am NagaLakshmi Gadiparthi from HEAL India. I remembered the happy day yourself and akka visited me in HEAL. Your visit gave me a lot of confidence.
Within 2 months I will be completing my 9th class. Tenth class is a turning point in life. I am studying hard and getting an aggregate of 80%. We have good Teachers. I like mathematics and Science. After Intermediate I want to do B.Pharmacy. With your support and blessings I hope I can fulfill my aspiration.
On 8th January we had a team of 30 people from England (Cycle India Team). They cycled around 200 miles in India to raise funds and to help the needy children of the HEAL. On that day the HEAL Children were so excited. On that day we celebrated Annual Day celebrations. I was there in Karate. You can see me in the pictures. I hope you like that.
Thank you very much for everything.
Love,
NagaLakshmi Gadiparthi
NagaLakshmi Gadiparthi taking part in a karate display as part of celebrations for Annual Day
Visitors from the UK and US visit the Heal Village as part of Cycle India 2010
The following email was received by Kathleen, Heal’s sponsorship secretary. This is one of the many emails she receives from sponsors telling us why they have chosen to support our charity.
Dear Kathleen
I have sent my completed sponsorship form off to you by post.
I just thought you might be interested to know how I chose Heal as a charity to support. I have supported various charities in the past and for many years sponsored a child through one of the larger ones but, like a lot of people, because of the size I felt rather disconnected with the operation. So I recently searched the web specifically looking for a smaller charity where I felt that the money I donated would go directly to the child I sponsored. That’s when I came across Heal and liked the sound of your operation and was particularly impressed that you mainly operate using volunteers.
I look forward to hearing about the child I will sponsor.
Best wishes
Janet Brooke
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.
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.
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
Heal Village News
Greetings from Heal Village!
Here we come with some more news from Heal!
The weather has changed from scorching heat to pleasant coolness, specially in the evenings. We had lots of rains this year. The trees in Chethana are washed clean of all the dust and look green!
The children have a busy time in the school with regular classes and also special classes after school hours. When they finish their midterm tests this month, they will get their midterm holidays.
Heal UK started a new project under Poverty Trap. The project provides ‘Mid Day Meals’ for 200 children who cannot afford to have a meal before coming to school because they come from very poor families. Under this scheme the children also receive clothes, uniforms, and books.
The two photos to the left show Dr. Manga Devi, serving food and handing over uniforms to the children. To the right you can see the children having their mid day meal.
Volunteers from Oundle School UK, Tristan, Sam, Flora and Emily stayed in Heal from 24th August to 19th Sept this year.
The children had a happy time interacting with the volunteers, playing cricket and volley ball with them or learning some English songs. They also had fun teaching them our language, Telugu!
Good bye ! will meet you again !
Children & Staff from Heal Village
Slums of Andhra Pradesh
On a recent visit to Andhra Pradesh, Dr Prasad stopped at a village and spoke about the appalling living conditions that many people in India still have to endure.
In this video you will see the type of slum conditions experienced by so many, and Dr Prasad explains the need for education of the children to break this cycle of poverty.
If you would like to help break the cycle of poverty then please consider sponsoring a child in India.
Albert & Adele Alcock’s visit to Heal January 2006
We have been sponsoring Hafisa for the last 5 years following an earlier trip to Rajasthan in India. It was after seeing the number of children that were either living on the streets or if not living in awful poverty that we wanted to do something to make at least one child’s future a little brighter.
After researching various organisations we decided to sponsor through Heal and hoped one day to be able to meet the child we were supporting – this year it actually happened!
We initially flew to Kerala in South India and spent 10 days touring the area before travelling by train to Guntur. This in itself was an experience and in true Indian style a 20 hour train journey turned into 24 hours! Whilst we would not have missed this experience I would not want to repeat such a long train journey.
Vijayalakshmi, Heal Sponsorship Secretary was waiting on the station platform for us and had been there from the original expected arrival time. It was lovely to be able to put a face to a name after all this time.
Vijayalakshmi took Albert and myself to her home in Guntar for a welcome shower and meal and there we met Vijaya’s husband George, both made us so welcome, we felt as though we had known them for ever not just met them.
Later that day we were driven to Heal Children’s Village approx 15 miles outside of Guntur – this was another experience in Indian travel, it’s no wonder Vijaya and George have a driver rather than driving themselves!
Heal itself was nothing like we had imagined it was like a little piece of Heaven tucked away on that vast dusty plain of Andhra Pradesh. It was set in 3 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds with tree’s, plant’s and flowers of all descriptions – ponds with frogs and water lily’s, squirrel’s clambering up and down, sculptures whittled out of fallen branches and proper buildings not the mud huts we had passed on our way through the countryside.
On arrival at the village we were welcomed by Marudhvathi, Co-ordinating Officer and some of the older children who took us on a quick tour of the area around the guest quarters before leaving us to settle in and promising to be back a little later to take us to meet the rest of the children and see the rest of the village. At the time of our arrival the majority of the children were enjoying their weekly treat of watching a film on TV and no one was going to get them away from that!
Later that day we met all the children and it was so nice to meet Hafisa after all this time. We were overwhelmed by the welcome they all gave us – so many happy smiling faces wanting to shake our hands and talk to us. We had brought small gifts for them – hair things, pens, stickers and lollipops and you would have thought we were giving them the earth, the joy on their faces was unbelievable – it was hard to believe such simple small things could mean so much. This was further emphasised when on the last afternoon we arranged for cakes for everyone after school and one little girl in particular just sat looking at her cake for ages as though she didn’t want to spoil it by eating it!
We were amazed at how well most of the children could speak and understand English. Most of the children attend the English Medium School and are taught in English and encouraged to excel in their studies. This was evident in the number of older children going in to school early for extra studies and seeing them all on an evening doing their homework.
We were looked after so well by everyone and we were very sorry to have to leave. We are definitely planning to return and for longer next time!!!!!!!!!
Albert & Adele Alcock