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Grace Third World Fund |
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Helping us to help others |
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HOW
WE BEGAN In 1997 Matthew Else (former pastor
of Peel Grace Baptist church), the founder of GTWF went to visit an orphanage
in Rajahmundry. There he met three
people who had a profound impact upon him - a young man called Timothy Babu,
whose dream was to build an orphanage and to help the many disadvantaged
children in India, and two severely disabled boys called Muddada Raju and Pudi Satyanaryana. Muddada Raju
(known as Raju) was at that time eleven years old. He had been born with a condition called
congenital bilateral quadriceps contracture, which in layman’s terms means
that he was born with his knee joints the wrong way round. It was possible for his condition to be
corrected by surgery, and he had already had a consultation at the Apollo
Hospitals in Chennai (formerly Madras).
The orthopaedic surgeon saw no reason why Raju should not be able to
walk normally, and the operation would cost £2,000. Raju’s father earned just a few pounds a
week pulling a rickshaw, and the cost of his son’s surgery was far beyond his
means, and thus Raju faced a future of begging in the streets of India,
because he would never be able to work for a living. The other boy, Pudi, had been
crippled by polio as an infant, and had never walked. Both these boys had correctible
problems. Just £2,000 needed for
Raju’s operation (a comparatively small amount by western standards) and a
concerted effort was made to raise this money as soon as possible. With the help of the Manx people including
the children of the local Junior School in Peel in particular, the money was
soon raised, and by the beginning of
1999, Raju had not only had his surgery, but was walking for the first time
in his life. Thus began a series of events which
lead to the formation of Grace Third World Fund. When it was decided to raise money for
operations for Pudi, more money was required, and to raise the sum of £6,000
someone who worked for an Isle of Man airline offered to organise a ‘Jet
Pull’. Basically, teams were to
attempt to pull one of the airline’s jets across the runway. As it was such a huge operation, insurance
was necessary. At the end of the day,
the obvious thing to do was to properly constitute a charity, and on 21st May 1998 Grace Third World
Fund was officially registered as Manx Registered Charity No 727. Pictures above:-
Raju (left) before operation and afterwards wearing his first ever pair of
trousers! Pudi (right) mid
operation wear calliper and afterwards walking with the aid of a crutch |
