<TABLE id=msgUN cellSpacing=3 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD id=msgUNsubj vAlign=top>Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Indian FT turned SG only help own people</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right>
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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Pilot Project
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Kolkata-born SIA captain helps fund toilet-building in India</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
HE MAY have experienced turbulence flying the world's biggest plane, the Airbus A-380, but it was quite another thing that jolted him.
In one of Kolkata's villages, Mr Indranil Ray Chaudhury recalls: 'There were children with heads as big as their bellies, with no access to regular medical care.'
That moment, said the Singapore Airlines (SIA) captain, 43, launched his work with the impoverished in India.
For the past five years, he has been helping needy villagers near Kolkata, attending to their medical and childcare needs, even their school fees.
Now, he is embarking on his most ambitious effort yet.
Calling it his 'Hygiene Project', he intends to build toilets for a group of villages on the outskirts of Kolkata. He has already begun construction in Kusumdahari, a village of 83 homes in the remote forests of Midnapore in West Bengal.
There, 450 villagers live in m&d huts with no electricity.
They defecate in the open, which doctors say pollutes their only source of water - a 90m deep well - making them vulnerable to water-borne diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid.
The 80 toilets Mr Chaudhury wants to build in each home will cost $25,000.
Each is slightly larger than a telephone booth, a model adapted from a Unicef design, in which waste will be deposited in a 1.5m deep pit dug into the ground and covered with a concrete slab.
His sole sponsor for the project, Nominated Member of Parliament Gautam Banerjee, grew up in Kolkata. The latter said: 'I wanted to show my moral support for the stellar work Mr Chaudhury has done to establish basic sanitary facilities.'
Mr Chaudhury, who was born in Kolkata and became a Singapore citizen in 1985, hopes to spread his project to the other villages in the area, but needs more funds to do so.
Currently, up to 95 per cent of his donors are Singaporeans, whose money goes directly to these projects. In 2006, he founded Isonfund, an India-registered non-government organisation, to bring such development projects to villages.
Its accounts are certified by a chartered accountant and presented to the Indian government every year, and details of its work are at [URL="http://www.isonfund.com/"]www.isonfund.com[/URL]
In 2003, the father of two young boys built a clinic for Ghatmura, a village about a five-hour drive from Kolkata. He found that its 600 residents were serviced by city doctors only once a month, leaving its sick to wait weeks for urgent medical care.
So he paid for eight doctors to make rounds once a week, and pharmacies to supply medication to villagers. He currently runs eight clinics in villages in the same area for about $1,000 a year, and checks in on them once every three months. His motivation to give, he says, is simple. 'Three words,' he said. 'Because I can.'
[email protected]
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Pilot Project
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Kolkata-born SIA captain helps fund toilet-building in India</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
HE MAY have experienced turbulence flying the world's biggest plane, the Airbus A-380, but it was quite another thing that jolted him.
In one of Kolkata's villages, Mr Indranil Ray Chaudhury recalls: 'There were children with heads as big as their bellies, with no access to regular medical care.'
That moment, said the Singapore Airlines (SIA) captain, 43, launched his work with the impoverished in India.
For the past five years, he has been helping needy villagers near Kolkata, attending to their medical and childcare needs, even their school fees.
Now, he is embarking on his most ambitious effort yet.
Calling it his 'Hygiene Project', he intends to build toilets for a group of villages on the outskirts of Kolkata. He has already begun construction in Kusumdahari, a village of 83 homes in the remote forests of Midnapore in West Bengal.
There, 450 villagers live in m&d huts with no electricity.
They defecate in the open, which doctors say pollutes their only source of water - a 90m deep well - making them vulnerable to water-borne diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid.
The 80 toilets Mr Chaudhury wants to build in each home will cost $25,000.
Each is slightly larger than a telephone booth, a model adapted from a Unicef design, in which waste will be deposited in a 1.5m deep pit dug into the ground and covered with a concrete slab.
His sole sponsor for the project, Nominated Member of Parliament Gautam Banerjee, grew up in Kolkata. The latter said: 'I wanted to show my moral support for the stellar work Mr Chaudhury has done to establish basic sanitary facilities.'
Mr Chaudhury, who was born in Kolkata and became a Singapore citizen in 1985, hopes to spread his project to the other villages in the area, but needs more funds to do so.
Currently, up to 95 per cent of his donors are Singaporeans, whose money goes directly to these projects. In 2006, he founded Isonfund, an India-registered non-government organisation, to bring such development projects to villages.
Its accounts are certified by a chartered accountant and presented to the Indian government every year, and details of its work are at [URL="http://www.isonfund.com/"]www.isonfund.com[/URL]
In 2003, the father of two young boys built a clinic for Ghatmura, a village about a five-hour drive from Kolkata. He found that its 600 residents were serviced by city doctors only once a month, leaving its sick to wait weeks for urgent medical care.
So he paid for eight doctors to make rounds once a week, and pharmacies to supply medication to villagers. He currently runs eight clinics in villages in the same area for about $1,000 a year, and checks in on them once every three months. His motivation to give, he says, is simple. 'Three words,' he said. 'Because I can.'
[email protected]
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