We're so grateful to James Atherton from Surrey, who is running the Virgin Money London Marathon on Sunday 22 April 2018 in aid of Hope Gardens. He'll be joining almost 40,000 people in running the 26.2 mile long event, with big names to look out for including Sir Mo Farah and David Weir CBE. Sponsor James here
James is running to raise £3,000 to set up a new after-school feeding programme. We currently have after-school feeding programmes in Cumbumettu, Salem and Mottamalai. In total we care for, feed and tutor over 140 children every day, who would otherwise be left with nowhere to go, until their parent or carer returns home from work very late in the evening. The children who attend our programmes are from extremely poor backgrounds. To give you some context, the average daily wage is just £1.50 a day.
We aim to bring hope to those families and our after-school feeding programmes do just that. They ensure that children have somewhere to go and be looked after when school finishes for the day; we help them with their homework, and they are able to play games with other children and have something to eat before going to bed. Without these programmes, many of the children would go to bed on an empty stomach. Some children, whose homes do not have electricity, will stay with us until as late as 9pm doing their homework.
We are so pleased to have James on board and on our trip to India on the 19th of March, we'll be using some of the funds raised by him to feed the children in our programmes.
Go James!