Having previously worked with Mahesh at the Canadian College of Business & Computers between 2000 and 2005, we had previously traveled together when we were doing international student recruitment and have subsequently remained in touch over the past two decades, even after he returned to India to start his own engineering business and family.

I spoke at length with Mahesh and said that I wanted to do something for a school in India while I was there. What I had in mind was to find a school where the students were in financial need and required educational materials. Mahesh researched and informed me that he felt that he had found a school that would greatly benefit from this generous gesture.

The school we chose is in the city of Belgaum where Mahesh lives. It is set up as an ashram in order to take in some of the poorest girls in the state of Karnataka. The ashram provides the girls with free board and lodging and aims to educate them until they are able to graduate from up to college level and be able to become educated women in India.

This spoke directly to me as I have long been a champion for education of those who deserve it, but often cannot afford it. I then proceeded to do fundraising in Canada and we were able to be in a position whereby we would be able to provide, free of charge, all of the required school materials for the girls to cover their entire school year. After all, education and lectures are unto themselves fairly useless unless students have the required materials in order to be able to write down and practise the material that they are learning. We repeated this event again in 2019 and have now registered the Daughters of India as an official charitable organisation.

It was so touching when we presented the girls their school supplies and I remember one young lady standing up and introducing herself and asked, nearly in tears, “why would someone come all the way from Canada in order to do something like this for us”? I replied that it is because I love education and being in a passion to be able to help out and to simply be happy to do it and to be able to help students such as these ones succeed.

The plight of the uneducated woman in India is quite bleak, from being sold into a rich family as indentured servants, to ending up in the sex-trade or, as National Geographic recently reported that child brides still exist in India where girls as young as 12 are married off to rich older men where they become no more than chattel.

When I returned again in 2019, this young lady came rushing up to me and told me that she was in college studying to become a nurse! That was reward enough for me!