English
Photo courtesy: Handi-Care International
By Ajit Jain
Toronto-based Handi-Care International (HCI), run by a group of Indo-Canadians, recently lobbied the Canada government to secure a grant for $112,000 for Amar Seva Sangam that’s supporting 14,000 disabled persons in 800 villages in Tamil Nadu and other places in India.
HCI President Sulo Krishnamurthy said this grant was announced a few days back by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander who is now visiting India.
HCI was established in 1992 with their main mandate of raising funds “to support and implement projects in India for the education and rehabilitation of poor, rural disabled with their major partner being ASS, located in Ayikuly, a village in Tamil Nadu.”
“Our bulk of the work is in India,” Krishnamurthy told The Indian Diaspora. “Our Canadian component recruits student volunteers, and clinical placements for health care graduate students. We train them and do placements.”
HCI’s Board comprises of seven members and they include Meena Suppiah (vice president), Srini B. Srinivasan (secretary), Sundra Rajan (treasurer).
“We raise funds for projects we select at ASSA, based on their most pressing needs and our collective interest, that fall under our mandate,” explains Krishnamurthy. “We also involve ourselves with the implementation of each project to a feasible extent and monitor them by regular visits, reports, photos and so on.”
Some of the recent projects that HCI has undertake include expansion of schools and early intervention which is done by their going with the individual children sponsorships and liaison with Canadian health care professionals.
Part of this, Krishnamurthy says, three professional occupational therapists will soon be going to India to work and teach with the staff therapists at ASSA for up to three months. HCI has been placing 5 to 10 Canadian physiotherapy and occupational graduate students and student volunteers every year since 2004.
HCI supports the education of 45 poor students annually at Maithri Educational Trust in India since 2000. Besides supporting 14,000 disabled persons, ASSA is supporting hundreds of spinal-cord injured and muscular dystrophy-affected people from all over India.
ASSA was established by S. Ramakrishnan and S. Sankara Raman.
“Despite total paralysis of his whole body at the age of 21 due to an accidental fall and requiring the help of others to get around for even little movement of his limbs, Ramakrishnan had the courage of conviction to start ASSA in 1981 when he was just 27 years. He was joined by Sankara Raman in 1992,” said Krishnamurthy.
This story originally appeared on The Indian Diaspora.
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