From Chris and Kris Hyde, who left Emmanuel a few years ago to work in India...
Following the huge success of ‘Warm Aid 2016’ last year, we launched ‘Warm Aid 2017’ in October 2017.
The idea that originally sprang from giving our spare winter clothing to the poor has grown beyond our wildest hopes.
We now have an established distributor network for clothes to the poor through our partners URCreator who are doing a wonderful job in Rajasthan and support our efforts wholeheartedly. They actively collect clothing now and distribute it with toys and educational material to the poor. Collecting clothes is a practice they only started when we came together as partners.
We hope to become involved with the education program in the future. Free street schools are the eventual aim.
We have again been running a drive to collect as many winter clothes as we can and working to distribute them before the coldest months of winter.
Literally, thousands of people have benefitted from ‘Warm Aid’ since last year, the majority being children.
As part of the effort to save lives among the very poor, that is the families who sleep on the City streets with no cover, not even a tent and those who spend the winter nights huddled in doorways and under shop fronts to try and keep warm sleeping on the cold marble.
These people we helped by collecting cash to buy good quality blankets to give them. We gave them on Christmas Eve to celebrate in a practical way the birth of our Lord Jesus. In all, we gave away over 200 blankets that night. Since then we have continued to collect donations for this cause.
A blanket from a sympathetic wholesaler who supports us and our cause costs Rs150, approximately £1.80.
Currently, we are pleased to announce that so far this year we have given over 300 blankets to the needy and passed many clothes to our partners for distribution. This year we have volunteers working with us and their help has been invaluable.
Please check out our Facebook page ‘Warm Aid 2017’ for more details.
The need here for warm clothing and blankets through the winter months is huge. Sadly it is a fact that when the warmer weather comes the very poor sell spare clothes and blankets to buy food or gas. At least those clothes and blankets then move on to help others in need.
As you can appreciate it is a never-ending cycle of poverty and need.
We are trying to help as many people as we can. A similar scheme has already been set up in Bangalore based on our model. We wish them every success.
We came here following the Lord's will and we endeavour that in all we do we follow his word. We may not be rich in monetary terms but we are rich beyond measure in Gods blessings. We are thankful for all the opportunities he presents us with to spread his love to others.
Since we left the UK we have always been convinced He gave us this chance to serve and in that service we have found great joy.