Enable a destitute child in India to have a better life
For only £15 per month or £180 per year, you can provide a full time boarding school education for a child near Bhubaneswar in Orissa, India who will otherwise be condemned to leprosy, sexworking, begging or whatever other form of destitution they were born into.
We are one of a few India charity organisations providing UK charity donations to support not several residential schools, but a single boarding school in Bhubaneswar, India. Every penny of charity donations goes to cover the cost of the childrens' residential education (keep and education).
None of your money will be spent on fundraising, administration, travel or the other expenses associated with the more familiar charity appeals.
Neither does money go towards other India based Charity organisations. It all goes to providing our pupils with good boarding school education (out of harms way) and the best school-life the charity donations can provide for our pupils.
A collection of Newsletters dating from 1999, is available from the latest news letter page. Understand more of the history of the School and pupils within it, we hope you may want to contribute once you understand how worthwhile a cause this is and how effectively 100% of the donated the money is spent.
New! Secure Online Donations
September 2007
We are very pleased to announce that we have now made it possible for you to give to our charity through CAF, the Charities Aid Foundation Charities (www.cafonline.org). If you are a UK taxpayer then 28% is automatically added to your donation. For more details, see the Simple Guide and please donate what you can.
To see how the money is spent please see our Newsletters
Who are we ? What do we do ?
We are a small education charity set up in 1992 to assist Palli Unnayan Seva Samiti in Orissa, still our main partner.
Our main purpose is to raise charity donations for the up-keep and provision of one of the best international charity funded, residential schools in India as without an official India school education more than 357 children from sexworker and leprosy colonies in Orissa would grow up to become uneducated, impoverished women. We do this mainly through 'word of mouth' publicity, circulars to regular and potential supporters information, stalls at local events, and applications to funding agencies.
Our supporters include friends from Cranfield School of Management, from Filgrave near Milton Keynes, from Bozeat in Northamptonshire, and from many other places in the UK and abroad.
Every penny we raise goes to the children in Orissa.
Committee members and other supporters visit Orissa regularly on other work, and other expenses are covered by in-kind donations.
We produce a small newsletter four times a year, which we mail or e-mail to our supporters. These newsletters, as well as other background information and dates of forthcoming events, are also published on this website.
Palli Unnayan Seva Samiti - Our main partner in India
Palli Unnayan Seva Samiti (PUSS) is a small voluntary organisation which has for more than 20 years been helping the poorer communities in a group of villages near Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Orissa, one of the poorest states of India.
Palli Unnayan Seva Samiti (PUSS) is a small voluntary organisation which since 1984 has been helping the poorer communities in a group of villages near Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Orissa, one of the poorest states of India.
In 1992 Kadambini Bhuyan, the remarkable woman who started PUSS, decided to do something for even more disadvantaged girl children from other places nearby. She identified 20 little girls from a sexworkers' colony in Orissa, whose mothers were anxious to save them from the same life that they had to lead.
PUSS set up a small boarding section for these girls but they needed a regular source of money to support them. Professors Gerry Johnson and Malcolm Harper of Cranfield School of Management, who had been teaching in Bhubaneswar at that time, decided to start Friends of the Children of Orissa. Since then the number of children has risen to almost four hundred and now also includes a small number of little boys whose parents are migrant labourers. Kadambini died in 2008 and PUSS is now ably managed by her successor.
We continue to raise charitable money donations from individuals to support the boarding and schooling of these children. We have also received a National Lottery grant to enable PUSS to accommodate more children and a grant from the Artisan Trust to develop the handicraft activities which support the boarding school.
Read more About Us and the National Lottery Grant we recieved.
The number of children we can assist is limited only by the amount of money we can raise.
We need your continued support to enable PUSS to board, feed and educate these children
What you can do?
- Make a Secure Online Donation, see our simple guide.
- Make a regular donation: fill in the Standing Order Form.
- Make a one-off donation: enclose your cheque, payable to Friends of the Children of Orissa.
- And if you are a UK tax payer: fill in the Gift Aid Form, if you are a UK tax payer and if you pay income tax and/or capital gains tax of an amount equal to or greater than the tax to be reclaimed by charities to whom you have made payments under gift aid in any tax year.
Gift aid declarations can only be made by individual tax payers, but cheques may be drawn on joint back accounts (but not company bank accounts).
£15 per month (£180.00 per year) paid under gift aid is worth significantly more to the Charity when we have reclaimed tax at 28% in th epound. So for every four children supported by our Friends, the Inland Revenue will effectively support an extra child.
One of our pupils in India being given a life choice