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Newry man David Cunningham and his Argentinian born wife Sol Martin are on the final phase of their World Tour and have arrived in Kerala, southern India where they working this past three weeks in 'Our Home', a home for 44 orphan children as well as a school for nearly 200 kids from the local area.
David is well known in Newry for his musical and artistic skills.
David commented "We've been staying with them for over a week now, we've played and studied and shared meals with all the kids and have quickly felt a part of their lives. Our Home was established in 2001 by Chacko, who is now 34 years old. It all started when he set off on a long journey which took him... to the next village: there he met a young boy who had nobody else in the world and his journey became completely different to what he had planned. He called off the trip, went back with the boy and decided to adopt him. And that was only the start: as we said, Our Home has now grown to forty-four in its eleven years. He works with local social workers who rely on him to take care of those children who have been abandoned and have no family members to look after them.
"Chacko is a very passionate man, with a great sense of humour and love. His vision, as he calls it, is for all the children to have opportunities to access education. Where many orphan kids are basically struggling for survival, Chacko's radical vision involves giving his kids an education which will turn them into agents for change. His first kid to go on to third level education was Kala, who is now completing her second year of nursing in Bangalore. I have to tell you how moving it is to see kids of five or six years of age studying in their dorm every night, under the one lightbulb, devouring their books: nobody is telling them 'Study!', they just learn from their teenage brothers and sisters, who help and encourage them."
"The kids are learning Hindi, English and Malayalam in school, so we have been able to help them only with English, but we've taught them games and learnt a lot from their enthusiasm, hard work and family spirit.
"As you can imagine, there are financial needs everywhere in the home, and indeed, the charity has volunteers who, after being here, have become fundraisers in their own countries: Australia, Switzerland and England."
Sol and David have decided to make a major difference and raise some money to send the next young man to third level education. Rajeeve is 19 years old and his dream is to study hotel management. Education is quite expensive (by Indian standards but not relatively to Irish), so during the past few months they've been struggling to gather the 180,000 rupees (£2,168). Their deadline is the end of July.
The fundraising bandwagon has begun in earnest in Newry already with one of the major events being a music session organised by Tommy Fegan at the Railway Bar in Monaghan Street this Thursday night the 26th of July and who knows you might even win a prize in the raffle but more importantly help change a young mans life forever.
Check out more on www.ourhomecharity.org
