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Toronto
Indians raise $320,000 for poor kids in India
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 09:31:06 AM,
IANS
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Toronto:
The Indo-Canadian community here raised $320,000 for the welfare
of poor children in India at a fund-raising gala attended by
former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
The Sunday-night gala was organised by the Toronto chapter of All
India Movement (AIM) for Seva which is dedicated to working for
underprivileged children of India and many other countries.
Addressing about 1,000 participants, who paid at least $500 each,
Kalam said poverty is universal and poor people everywhere deserve
help and service from organisations like AIM for Seva. People are
in dire straits in every part of the world and only the proportion
of poverty varied from country to country, he said.
Lauding AIM for Seva, Kalam said it should spread its "good work
of educating under-privileged children" to even more countries,
including Canada.
Live a "life of righteousness and giving. In giving you receive
happiness in body and soul,'' Kalam exhorted the audience, keeping
them spell-bound with real-life anecdotes, and hilarious jokes.
To a huge applause, the former president recalled how and his team
helped children afflicted with polio.
"My friend, an orthopedic surgeon, was running an orthopedic
hospital for children who were afflicted with crippling polio.
Most of these children had crippled limbs and they wore calipers
for the minimum mobility. However, these calipers were so heavy
that they were proving to be counter-productive as the children
found it impossible to drag the caliper weight. So in spite of
wearing the calipers, the children were still immobile,'' Kalam
narrated.
Seeing their plight, he said he prevailed upon his surgeon friend
to design light-weight calipers so that the crippled children
could start moving. "Within 20 days with the help of my team, we
created ultra-lite calipers. Children, who earlier were tethered
to their beds, were now running around. When the children's
mothers watched their kids running around with the help of ultra-lite
calipers, I could sense their eyes welling up. That was one of the
happiest moments of my life,'' the former president said amid a
huge applause.
Kalam is in Canada to accept an honorary degree from the
University of Waterloo and deliver a public lecture on the topic
of 'Science is Borderless: The future belongs to science and those
who make friends with science.'
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