F ID I C H A RI T Y HEALING WITH FEELING Some of the children who have benefited from the Healing with Feeling project FIDIs 39 Club and Charity Committee have selected FIDIs next charity venture, Healing with Feeling in India. Lydia Cope, FIDI Customer Relations Officer, gives some background to the project, which we will be supporting over the next three years, thanks to the FIDI Communitys generous donations F LYDIA COPE, FIDI CUSTOMER RELATIONS OFFICER 20 FF293 OctNov19 pp20-21 Charity.indd 20 ollowing a rigorous charity selection progress, which saw FIDI Affiliates worldwide put forward 18 charity projects for consideration, the FIDI 39 Club Board, with the support of the FIDI Charity Committee, has selected FIDIs next charity project Healing with Feeling in India. Following on from FIDIs former projects, Bertrams Junior School and Operation Smile Honduras (OSH), we will be working with the Healing with Feeling Trust to help it to provide children in dire need with a better future. Healing with Feeling started work on academic and medical aid projects in early 2017. The trusts mission is to make education available to every child and ensure a brighter future for him or her. It aims to ensure that no child is at a disadvantage because of his or her social, economic and geographical position at birth. Since its inception, the trust which was set up and run by 12 volunteers from various walks of life, including a lawyer, doctor, yoga teacher and psychologist, accountant and teacher has taken over the education of more than 35 children from Haridwar, Rishikesh and Kasauli in India. It now seeks to adopt children from an academic point of view in the more remote and hilly regions of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. In the past two years, the trust has organised yoga camps, childrens psychology sessions and classroom refurbishments, in addition to its dedicated academic adoption programme. In April 2018, Healing with Feeling was officially registered as a formally constituted charity in India, which allows the trusts income to be exempted from tax and for donations to the trust to be treated as deductible expenses for donors - all in line with FIDIs Charity Committee requirements. Hailing from the New Delhi metropolis, the founders of Healing with Feeling felt removed from the difficulties of life faced by children of socially and financially challenged families in rural and semi-urban areas and wanted to help those less privileged to have a fairer start in life. Frequently, the children of poor labourers spend their days at construction sites where their parents work; literacy levels are very low and work is scarce. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds - the child of a cobbler or a flower seller, for example - often end up as juvenile beggars because the family does not earn enough for all of them to eat. The loss of a working parent in an accident, illness or death can also have the same devastating effect on the future of the children, leading to future employment opportunities being shut off because of a lack of education. Healing with Feelings aim is secure the future WWW. F I D I . OR G 18/09/2019 12:37