Dr. Chandrasekhar Sankurathri, otherwise known as “Dr. Chandra”, lost his wife and two children in the tragic bombing of Air India Flight 182 from Canada to London in 1985. After three years of working through unbearable grief while employed as a government scientist in Ottawa, Dr. Chandra decided that he needed to “do something useful.”
Inspired by his late wife’s concern for the poor in her native India, Dr. Chandra opened the Sarada School – named for his daughter – in wife’s home state of Andhra Pradesh.
After school is over for the day, the school bus is busily picking up blind and nearly-blind patients awaiting free cataract surgery at the Srikiran Institute of Ophthalmology, named for Dr. Chandra’s son. India has about a quarter of the world’s blind! Staff of the hospital is local, and receives a small salary and room and board. Five opthamologists are paid $1,500 per month; each surgeon performs approximately 150 surgeries per day.
Read about this unstoppable man and his work here and here.
He is a truly remarkable man!
One of his big fundraisers is the annual ‘Indian food picnic’ in Ottawa: and this year’s is coming up on Saturday, June 13th, 2009.
http://msmf.ca/events/MSMFPicnic13Jun2009.pdf
A delicious way to support a worthy cause!
(By the way – I am not affiliated with the picnic or the foundation: I just go for the chance to indulge in the name of a worthy cause…)
Thanks for this! It sounds wonderful.
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