Led by Heal founder Dr Satya Prasad, 23 cyclists from England, Scotland, Wales, India and the USA pedalled 280kms in five days through the plains, hills and backwaters of Kerala, south of Mumbai, mostly in temperatures in the low 30s Centigrade.

During their 10-day trip the group also visited schools, a hospital and Heal projects, including the Children’s Village in Guntur and the ambitious new Paradise Village site in Andhra Pradesh.

Along the way they received welcome donations from local businesses, with most of the funds raised going towards new buildings at the Paradise project, which will become home to 1,000 orphaned, abandoned and needy children.

Heal’s head of fundraising in the UK, Matthew Glover, gave the event a big thumbs-up and said that organisers Kalypso Adventures had already been retained as partners for Cycle India 2014.

“Our first Cycle India in 2008 was a great success and we built upon that two years later, but 2012 was the best Cycle India yet and that was thanks in large part to Kalypso who did a great job,” he said.

It was also revealed by Dr Prasad during the trip that plans are afoot for a new biannual Cycle India event for Indian participants to run on alternative years, while plans are already in the pipeline for the UK to host its own Lands End to John O’Groats ride later this year.

The cyclists were warmly welcomed throughout the duration of the challenge from Kochi to Kumarakom and took every opportunity to interact with local children at towns, villages and schools along the way.

But nothing could prepare them for the tumultuous greeting they received at the Heal Children’s Village where hundreds waited in hot sun to celebrate their arrival before entertaining their guests with a spectacular stage show filled with song, dance and colour.

Some members of the group were even able to meet face-to-face with the youngsters they sponsor at the village, while others, such as Cycle India first-timers Emily Young and Stephen Garrett, were moved to sponsor children for the first time.

Upon leaving Guntur, Stephen and fiance Emily were heading straight to Mumbai for their own traditional Indian wedding.

A number of the cyclists have already put their names forward for Cycle India 2014, with a route provisionally planned to run down the western coastline from Mumbai to the popular tourist destination of Goa.

Please sign up to the Heal newsletter to receive more Cycle India reports and stories and the latest fundraising news, as well as regular updates of progress from the Paradise Village project.

The improvements brought about not only by the dedication and hard work of the children, their teachers and house mothers, but through continued support from HEAL sponsors, are there for all to see.

No fewer than 16 senior children at the Village have recently won Polytechnic placements to engineering courses, double the number achieved last year, and four times the number in 2009!

Eleven of the placements were in electronics & communication, another in electrical & electronics engineering and two each in computers and mechanical engineering.

In addition to those 16, another 22 children successfully qualified in Intermediate, IT, nursing and other vocational courses, demonstrating the wide range of skills being developed.

These are just the latest positive results to come out of the school following excellent academic performances by the children in science, mathematics and languages, all of which pays tribute to the
educators within the Village.

Many pupils point to the 10th class as being a pivotal time in their lives and HEAL supporters can feel proud that no fewer than 38 children at the Village passed their 10th class examinations this year. And the message coming out of the Village is that it is the support of HEAL and its generous sponsors which inspires the school to set, and continually achieve, higher and higher goals. A growing number of children in HEAL’s care are now going on to become promising young students, some entering further education to help secure their future.

Teachers within the Children’s Village school assess those pupils who they believe are capable of going on to successfully further their education. And through its further education budget, HEAL is committed to helping these bright young adults, who it is hoped will be able to not only go on to achieve their ambitions in life, but to one day be able to put something back into their local communities. This is vitally important for the future development of the region and is seen as an important and expanding area of the charity’s work in Andhra Pradesh.

In addition to HEAL residential and poverty trap sponsors, we are therefore seeking vital financial backing for these higher education students. For £48 per month, it is possible to sponsor a student’s
education for between one and three years at a higher educational facility.

It is crucial that the children who grow up in the HEAL Village are not forgotten once they head out into the world. They need our support more than ever at a time when they are just beginning
to engage successfully with the future. HEAL aims to gradually increase its funding for those leaving the school to ensure these children can go on to fulfill their true potential.

If you would be interested in sponsoring a child or have considered volunteering in India then please contact Ann at healsec@hotmail.co.uk.

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

Dear Kathleen

Best wishes
Janet Brooke

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.

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.

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.

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

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