Day 5 - Saturday 11th October
 A massive “THANK YOU” to Russ Oliver from Epsom who has introduced us to so many people over the past few days. Russ and his friend David flew out with us on 6 th October and went home this morning. Russ has been out to Chennai six times now and regularly brings out business contacts from the UK to see projects in this City. He very kindly agreed to join us for the first five days and effect introductions to the people and projects he knows – we are hugely grateful to him for using his time and resources help us in this way.
Today we started with a breakfast meeting with Gayathri Mohan who is the Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility for an IT company called Steria. The introduction was effected via Jon Lane’s next door neighbour who also works for Steria and spends a lot of his time in Chennai. Steria are very committed to their CSR and support projects in areas where they have offices – that is Chennai, Delhi and Mumbai. She was very keen for us to visit an orphanage and school which is really struggling to make ends meet.
 The Annai Fathima Trust was founded 30 years ago by Mrs Rani Krishnan and her husband as an orphanage and school for abandoned children. Mr Krishnan died about four years ago and Mrs Rani Krishnan has been really struggling to make ends meet since this time as her husband had historically looked after fundraising and she was the mother figure and carer for the children. The CSR team from Steria became aware of their struggles earlier this year and, even though their budget for the year was already committed, they managed to raise some additional funds to help pay for food for the children.
Annai Fathima is home to 172 children, 52 of these are orphans from the Tsunami, the others all have different stories – some were dustbin babies (yes, literally abandoned by their mothers, often because they are girls), others were children to single parent families who could not live with the shame within their communities.
 We were given a fabulous welcome and we were asked to open the new room with some computers which had been provided by Steria. In this picture Gayathri of Steria is on the left and Mrs Rani Krishnan is in the blue sari. For your information, we haven’t spilt carrot soup on our faces, we were marked with a saffron mix when we arrived – I think this is a sort of blessing and just hope if comes out of my T Shirt!
 We then moved to the Hall for a welcome from all the children and some fabulous entertainment. The girls showed us a number of traditional dances in the most beautiful costumes which were made by the children and staff. The boys showed us their best dance moves, firstly to traditional music and then Jon, Steve and Terry were invited to join them and dance – no comment from me as Steve has a recording of my dancing attempt so I think we can arrange a trade before one of us gets access to You Tube!
We met Elsa a lady in her late 20’s who has suffered with Polio and is confined to a wheelchair (centre in attached picture). Steria have supported her through her education and college and she is now working as a teacher at Annai Fathima, teaching computers, English and art.
 We were shown around by Remeggious who is now 26 years old but was brought up in the home from when he was very small. The Trust managed to support him through College and an Engineering Degree, he now works for the World Bank. He told us about his 2 years in Ireland studying for his MBA when he also worked in the evenings so that he could send money back to help his “mother” who was struggling so much. He is now back in India and helps out as much as he can with the other children. We met a number of older children who were studying for Carpentry, Biotechnology and Electrician. All still live at the home until they are able to support themselves and wherever possible Mrs Krishnan tries to arrange support for college education, she has now seen 15 of her children graduate in the past 30 years.
 The home’s main problem is that it has no regular support aside from a small government grant for 25 children which is £3 per month for each of these children. The site is in bad repair, the newly constructed road (IT Highway) is higher than their land and hence during the rainy season the runoff is a big problem, and without proper drainage stagnant water sits around the site. They explained that the mosquitoes gather there spending disease.
The children’s sleeping areas were two large halls with bare concrete floors, one for girls and one for boys. The roof of this building is a plastic covering and consequently means this space is always very hot and also leaks when it rains. There were two wells on the site but both were completely empty. They are now considering a deep water bore hole for future access to water.
Mrs Rani Krishnan is obviously an amazing mother figure as the children were all fantastic. She is committed to making sure the children leave her and go on to a bright future, many are now nurses, or work in catering or other jobs. She has so far arranged marriages for 36 of the girls who have left the home and told us how they all come back for Christmas, and when they are expecting babies they return to her for the two months before the births so she can be with them.
 We had a fabulous morning and were made so welcome by the staff and children. As we drove through the main gate we looked up at the bright shiny office block sitting opposite and were amazed again at how such corporate affluence can sit side by side with such poverty.
It is Jon and Steve’s last day so we headed off in a put-put (electric rickshaw) for a really hairy journey to a traditional Tamil restaurant. Tomorrow is a day of rest for Terry and I, in fact he has nodded off in front of the TV already and it’s only 1700.
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