Disaster strikes as target reached

Oct 8 2010 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

SURPASSING a £40,000 target to improve lives of destitute Indian girls has been bittersweet for Perthshire fundraisers.

Before last Friday’s Gleneagles charity event, the female team, led by Rhynd single mum Mel Morris, had already secured £25,000 costs of a new home for outcast girls near remote Himalayan village Kapkote.

On the night, the balance of £15,000 to build a skills centre to teach girls carpet weaving and sewing was achieved, helped considerably by a generous £3000 donation from the Anne Gloag Foundation.

But terrible news from the North Indian region where the team was due to visit this month to help project partners, the Lotus Flower Trust, work on the new home, has cast a dark cloud on jubilation.

“The whole area has been declared a disaster zone – it’s apparently the worst monsoon and flooding in 35 years,” explained Ms Morris.

At neighbouring town, Sumgarh, 18 children had been killed after a huge boulder dislodged by flooding fell onto a school, with six pupils dug out alive and 12 still missing.

“The villagers are trying to dig out the mud and find them. The whole village will be affected for generations and I cannot begin to imagine the grief that the whole area feels,” she said.

Anxiously awaiting a situation report from Kapkote, she said she had already been told that access to the village was impossible and the October working visit with 11 of her team and their children was off.

“It was game on,” said Ms Morris. “We had the flights booked, injections done, bags packed, everything, so now we’re planning to go between Christmas and New Year.

“We’ll be helping build and paint, also do a big shop for things like beds and furniture, as well as some skills development training with the girls, including basic first aid.

“We’re also taking some tartan material so the girls can make some Scottish outfits and we’ll have a ceilidh for Hogmanay when we’re there.

“I think it’s important for the girls’ motivation that we visit and I know they’re looking forward to us going.”

Ms Morris – a businesswoman who has twice beaten breast cancer – launched the project late last year after she and her teenage son Josh visited a grim ashram (communal home) housing the outcast girls.

“There were 79 girls, all aged between three and 17, living in absolutely shocking conditions,” she said.

“They were sleeping on a bare concrete floor, sharing grubby blankets, with no heating. They’d get up at 5am as it was so freezing and wash in cold water outside.

“It was so sad. They had no privacy, no dignity, nothing, not even the basic fundamentals of life, whereas kids over here have bedrooms full of iPods and hair straighteners.”

Before leaving, Ms Morris bought the girls mattresses, pillows and bed linen, and once back home, initiated the quest to finance the Akaash Ganga home – which means River of Stars – and skills centre on NGO-gifted land near Kapkote.