Current News

September 2011

Little Lilies Creche has been purchased by the Betsy Elizabeth Trust this month. Legal papers in Tamil were received by HKI last week. This little school has grown from a dilapidated potato shed to a real school, with a large classroom that seats 50 children, (on the floor), a toilet, a kitchen, a food storage area, a tiny reading room, a small classroom with table and benches for writing, a garden, a playground and a spring fed well. This purchase will sustain our presence in one of the most needy areas that we serve. Surrounded by refugee settlements and small agricultural villages, Little Lilies serves many more children than the 50 who actually enter the door. Now that they are cared for, the older siblings can return to school, and the parents can return to work without worry, enabling them to start feeding their families. Because of our educational seminars and outreach programs, we are able to reach hundreds of extended family members which impacts the whole community. We call it the "ripple effect".

Kingdom Rally: Richard Barsotti of Wasted Spark Motorcycles, E. Topsham, Vermont, hosted an antique motorbike and car rally on September 11, 2011. 7 rally participants riding vintage bikes and antique cars roared through the picturesque villages of the Northeast Kingdom to raise money for an additional classroom for Grace Kids' Center, Kodaikanal. Sponsors donated enough funds to build a temporary tin sheet classroom: tin roof, tin walls and mud floor that will provide shelter during the monsoon rains and winter season for our 50 children. We hope to make this an annual event, so watch for our advertisements on line same time next year. It is an easy date to remember. In honor of the many Americans who lost their lives, we see the mission of our schools to be one of building bridges of peace in communities with people of diverse religions.

April 2011

ART EXHIBITION FUND RAISER: Bruce and I are hosting our annual art exhibiton with local artists this time for raising funds for our smokeless stove project. We have just discovered another village with over 500 families, so there is plenty of work to be done. We are pleased that a local women's group, and KIS students may be joining us.

March 2011

Gail and Jim Seavey of Nashville, Tennessee, joined our creches in Kodaikanal for a one month project of story telling. Gail, (daughter of Lois and Ed, Sherwood, E. Corinth, VT), delights in telling stories to children that build community and respect among the families we serve from different religions. She chose the "Flood Story" known as Noah's Ark in the Christian and Moslem traditions which the children acted out with great enthusiasm. The Hindu tradition also has a flood story that incorporates the creation of the world and the first man and a big fish. Here, Noah, gathers his relatives into the ark, yes, a real boat! Jim, a silversmith by trade, worked with Selvam installing stoves for our smokeless stove project.

February 2011

Grace Kids' Center:
Showing up at just the right time for the Pongol Celebration, a harvest festival lasting for a week where in southern India: cows are painted with big colorful polk a dots, blue horns, coconut palm fronds are lashed to doorways and car bumpers, colorful kolam designs are drawn on the ground by women, sandalwood paste dots adorn just about everything and a special nutritious sweet of rice, ghee, cashew nuts, coconut, and joggery (sugar cane sweet) is prepared on an open fire outside ourcreche and shared with the children.

Little Lilies' Creche:

Chuck a frisbee like a pro! Ok, so I don't know everything that goes on here. Where he learned this or got the frisbee, I don't know. This creche sports a brand new overhang filled with skylights that adds a whole new dimension of shelter and extended classroom, designed and constructed by our Geneva International Students last year. What a difference! Flowers and vegetables alike sprout from this well tended garden spot. Watching the children struggle to spell their names on a slate with chalk, I am reminded of the "sign" of the illiterate, the thumb print, and hope our children will never need to use it.

Peach Tree Creche:
Fun! Fun! Fun! today on my second visit, my duty is to put T-shirts on 50 small children, their new school uniforms, their big brown eyes examining every inch of my being. It also gives me a chance to check body health: weight or lack of it, hair, skin, injuries and those big smiles. My eyes are immediately drawn to a small child who has suffered a trauma at birth, a critical story now turned to the news of his gaining weight, growing hair and joining the rest of the children. Today we put on new uniforms made by our sewing ladies, and they fit! A great asset to our program.

Benjamin Krause:
Our outreach coordinator has recently undergone a detached retina surgery in Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India, and is recuperating well. Having to look down 24/7 for two weeks is a challenge. Thank goodness he likes to work on the computer!

Gail Roulx:
During Gail's second visit to India this January, 2011, she was invited by the Betsy Elizabeth Trust to be our new Regional Sewing Center Manager for New England. She needs your orders for our ladies' products: tote bags, quilts, yoga mat bags and pillow covers with one of kind children's drawings.

October 2010

A new creche was opened by the Betsy Elizabeth Trust on October 1, 2010, near our Helping Hearts location funded fully by the Good Shepherd Church, of North Carolina, and serving 50 children. The Good Shepherd Creche, sharing the same name as its donor, is a connection made by our founder, Betsy Dailey, who just returned from India to visit the new site. Watch for more pictures in January!

July 2010

Cookstove project: Gary Knapp is our BET representative to the famous "Stove Camp" in Oregon, held each year by devoted engineers and designers to promote clean and efficient cooking stoves for developing countries. Over 2 million people die every year from upper respiratory infection, many of them women and children, from cooking over open fires daily in their homes without chimneys or proper ventilation. Our cookstove project has been running in Kodaikanal along side our creches successfully for more than 5 years, installing red clay stoves with chimneys in family homes. We hope Gary's new input will help us to assist many more needy families with this very fixable problem.

June 2010

Hilda Isaac, our BET manager, finds a new location for Peach Tree Creche which will improve the health standards of the school and provide an outdoor playground. The location is near the old school site so we may continue to serve the same children.

May 2010

Our Sewing Training Center moves to a new location with cheaper rent, located by the women themselves, empowering them to take ownership of this new outreach project, and again reducing costs.  Ann Peck hosts an annual art exhibition in her home in Kodaikanal with other local artists to raise funds for our creches.

April 2010

Janet Welling wraps up a 2 month volunteer visit in Kodaikanal working in our sewing training center to train our women how to make creche uniforms for our children, reducing our annual budget and providing jobs for our ladies. She also introduced new items that will be shown in Switzerland for future fair trade marketing opportunities. Now retired from teaching and working independently of the Swiss students, she continues to stick with us!

March 2010

Dear Friends of the Crèches:  Finally coming up for air after two very successful student trips and some very cool volunteers who have visited us. Please respond when you have time. It's always great to hear from the other side of the globe! Bruce is now in the US due to the sudden death of his father last week, who spent most of his working life in India, furthering education through a boys home and seminary.  We hope Bruce will escape the new Indian government regulations for tourists and be able to return to India.

February 2010

A rope of jasmine flowers is cut in two to open a new health awareness center at Helping Hearts Crèche, Poriyar. Funds were raised by 12 students and 2 staff from St. Johnsbury Academy, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, who traveled to India for the first time to complete the building of the center and initiate educational materials for a great first step in health intervention in this rural coastal community. Daily trips to this hot, dusty village were made in a convoy of 5 auto rickshaws, a common 3 wheeler transport in India, with students racing to get a ride with their favorite driver. Installing the first smokeless stove in this community (see outreach) , painting educational materials in our crèche, interacting with children and teachers for two weeks built a bond that holds across two cultures. A state of the art water filter, like those designed for our US military troops, now has a new home in India where it pumps clean water daily for the health center and school, donated by Seldon Tech, Inc. of Windsor, Vermont.  High school students with heart, drive and packed duffle bags make an impact in this tiny village. Hammers fly as tin sheets and skylight sheets are lifted up to complete a new overhang for Little Lilies Creche in Kodaikanal. 30 students and staff from Geneva International School return each year to continue their support of our schools, including two they have started, Little Lilies and Peach Tree Creches. The new overhang was a student idea, and the sheltered but sunny area extends classroom and playground in all kinds of weather. Installing smokeless stoves, painting educational designs in our crèches, attending a shocking Hindu festival and bonding with our children and teachers leaves little "down" time for these students and provides true testimonials to take back home.

January 2010

Treddle sewing machines hum, knitting needles click away, and lots of laughter ripples between our 6 sewing ladies and Gail Roulx. Gail is a volunteer from Topsham, Vermont, who came to teach our women quilt making, knitting sweaters for our crèche children and pattern design. They call her their "Rani" (queen), and we hope she comes back to visit us again.

October 2009

Students from St. Johnsbury Academy start fund raising with "apple crisp" to kick off a plan for a trip to India, in February 2010. They will work at our Helping Hearts Creche and participate in challenging health and education initiatives. They are also collecting donations of small wool sweaters for 5 year old children to take with them. Drop point at the Academy, main office.

March 2009

February 2009

Kimberly Windisch, a recent art education graduate from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, has joined us in Kodaikanal for 6 months to work with the children in the crèche's. She has a special project of making a photo booklet explaining our crèche curriculum which will be useful for our donors and supporters.

January 2009

On January 21st, Ann Peck's father died in the USA from pancreatic cancer, just 3 days after Bruce and Ann arrived in India. They rushed home to attend a memorial service in South Carolina with other family members. Harold Franz's final burial will be in Topsham, Vermont, early June.

December 2008

On Monday, we received the wonderful news that the IRS has approved our application for non-profit as a public charity which means all donations are tax deductible.

Write checks to>: Help-Kids-India, Inc.

Mail to>: Susan Pratt, 371 Topsham Corinth Road, Topsham, VT 05076

• we have no overhead as an office
• we exist only as a website
• a bank account
• a postal address
• group of people working together for the education of impoverished children of India.