Paul Hamlyn Foundation announces anniversary gift of £1m to Jaipur Foot, India
As part of its 25th anniversary celebrations, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation has announced an endowment gift of £1m to the ‘Jaipur Foot’, an organisation which provides prosthetic limbs to people suffering from loco-motor disabilities in India and across more than 15 other developing countries.
The endowment is the second anniversary gift to be announced by the Foundation and follows a gift to the Roundhouse in October. The announcement was made at a ceremony at the headquarters of Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sayahata Samiti (BMVSS, the full name of the Jaipur Foot organisation) on Tuesday 27 November.
Jaipur Foot works to support disabled people, particularly the poor, enabling them to regain mobility and become self-reliant and fully participating members of the community. Since its inception in 1975, Jaipur Foot has helped rehabilitate more than 1.3 million people making it one of the largest organisations supporting disabled people in the world.
Paul Hamlyn Foundation is its most significant supporter, having supported Jaipur Foot for the past 22 years. The £1m endowment will support the continued fitting of prostheses for all that need them, through the work of the new Paul Hamlyn International Research Centre for Prosthetics and Orthotics in Jaipur.
Commenting, Jane Hamlyn, Chair of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, said: “We are delighted to announce this special gift to Jaipur Foot as part of our 25th anniversary celebrations. Our funding will help Jaipur Foot to support many more people affected by severe disabilities regain their mobility and play an active role in society. Our mission is to help people to realise potential and maximise their quality of life, and our gift delivers this in a very direct way for many thousands of people in India and beyond.”
Mr. D.R. Mehta, Founder and Chief Patron of Jaipur Foot, added: “Paul Hamlyn Foundation has aided our development with several grants over many years. This endowment will provide a permanent source of support for us as we continue to research, create and fit limbs for thousands of people each year. We see it as great humanitarian work along with the promotion of scientific research.”
Speaking after the inauguration ceremony, Sachin Sachdeva, Director of the India programme, said: “It was a touching, and emotional experience for all concerned and in any case every visit to the BMVSS leaves one marvelling at how solutions to development problems that are led by the heart and worked on by the mind can make such a major change to people’s lives.”
The endowment builds on the Foundation’s long tradition of directly supporting Indian NGOs. The Foundation’s India programme seeks to build the capacity of Indian NGOs to support the development of the sector in India, rather than funding UK or international organisations operating in India. Since the Foundation was established in 1987, it has provided grants to more than 140 Indian organisations totalling £9.2 million.
