Hi!
I'd like to invite you to join me in a special charity project we have initiated with my company SkyQuestCom.
When someone has done something good to you, most of us want to return them a favour. However, most people don’t need the favour in return. So instead of returning a favour, those who have benefitted are asked to do something good to someone else instead.
The term originates from the movie, “Pay It Forward”. If you get an opportunity to watch the movie you will be touched by the heart-warming story it presents.
We have chosen a home for kids with HIV/AIDS in Chennai, India. The name of the home is "Shelter: Hope for Every One".
 | About Shelter
Shelter's aim is to provide love, laughter, and life to HIV-positive children. - Love - because most of these children have lost their parents and are longing for love.
- Laughter - to take them through the difficulties of their situation.
- Life - to give them a quality life for as long as they live with proper care, food, clothing and other needs.
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The home is filled with HIV-positive kids and has 4 HIV-positive women as staff. 90% of the children have lost both parents. The rest have a single parent who is not in a position to take care of them because the parents themselves are in the back end of life.
Help the Children
Here are just a couple of examples of the different kinds of children with various degrees of problems and issues the shelter helps:
Suraj, 10 years old, has lost both of his parents and four of his siblings - he lost one elder sister, his two small brothers and one younger sister. Imagine the emotional trauma and difficulty this child has to face in seeing six of his family members dying in front of him. He came into the home on his last days, but with antiviral drugs, he is now stable.
Sita, a 7 year old girl, has multiple sicknesses in her brain. These cause convulsions or ticks. When she has an attack, froth will come from her mouth and she faints and needs to be attended to within 1 hour of the attack.
Senthil, an 8 year old boy, has skin infections from his head to his toes with open wounds all over his body. His mother wished he would die because she could not handle his suffering. She literally said "I am dropping you here and would be happy if you died." He is now doing well. He is smiling, he is going to school, and is one of the bubbly children they have in the home.
No financial support to help any more children
The shelter has had to turn down kids who need help because they do not have the financial support to take on any more children.
They do not currently have any support from the corporate sector, or government sector or international funding. The shelter is being run on an individual basis, but is a registered trust in India. Currently the shelter is only supported by friends, relatives and a few local individuals.
Finances are an added stress to the already present stress of taking care of these very sick and needy children.
They have difficulty finding proper schools for these children. If the kids have a fall or get sick, the shelter gets desperate calls from the school for them to come and take them. Emergency help from hospitals is difficult. Even simple issues like getting a haircut are difficult because they have boils all over their heads and it can stink quite badly. Barbers are not willing to come in and do a simple haircut.
There are also food issues; as some children have different dietary requirements and cannot eat the same things. Feeding them in front of others can be difficult because they may want certain foods that they cannot eat.
These kids go through a lot of emotional trauma in their lives and often don't know how to express themselves.
I'd like to encourage you to join us in this cause along with us:
Richard Tan
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