|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Yoga teacher Simon Low first learnt about the work of HOPE 15 years ago after meeting a supporter of the organisation at his local London pub. Now a HOPE Patron, Simon – who will be launching our Yoga for HOPE campaign on 1 June – writes about his personal connection to India, his travels to Kolkata and the yoga community’s efforts to make a difference.
I love and am so grateful for the support shown by so many teachers and students of yoga toward The Hope Foundation. Every child, every member of HOPE staff, our whole team is immensely grateful for the difference you make. Your support enables thousands of homeless and often abandoned children from the streets and slums of Kolkata to receive healthcare, education and support, each year.
Your support helps HOPE provide secure Residential Childcare Centres , although this is still a fraction of the need for safe shelter in Kolkata. Your donations help exploited and at-risk women, find safety, skills, and shelter. You bring light to one of the most challenged street and slum populations of the world - the last few years due to the pandemic being some of the most challenging since HOPE’s beginnings.
For myself, working with HOPE all began at the pub. I lived in Primrose Hill for most of my life in the UK, and “The Engineer” was one of my local dining destinations, having reopened as one of London’s first gastro pubs. During another delicious evening meal, I read a small card on the table politely requesting an optional 50p donation to The Hope Foundation be added to the bill.
Join Yoga for HOPE
Simon launched the Yoga for HOPE campaign on 1 June with an online 90-minute Yoga and Somatics class. Follow the link below to purchase a recording of the class* - the £10 fee will be donated to HOPE:
On requesting more information, Julie-Kate Olivier, a founder of the renewed Engineer and a Hope Foundation supporter arrived table-side. After many chats with Julie-Kate over the following year, along with further encouragement from one of the most dynamic original HOPE supporters Mairead Sorenson, whom I met at Railay Beach Club in Thailand and when I subsequently took a flight with my then 18-year-old daughter from Bangkok to Kolkata to visit the HOPE projects, 14 years ago.
Apart from my association with India through yoga, my parents' decade of life in Shimla, and my concerns for children in this world, which were my primary initial influences, it was the people involved with HOPE that made the difference. HOPE was clearly blessed with a dedicated team, a generous and inspirational founder in Maureen Forrest (who established The Hope Foundation in 1999), and a dedicated base of Anglo-Irish fund raisers and supportive individuals. I felt I could be useful. What also really impressed and inspired me was how cost effective and efficient HOPE was, both in management and in the spending of charitable donations; head and shoulders more than any other charity I had encountered anywhere.
Arriving into Kolkata after a week on an isolated rainforest lake yoga retreat in Thailand was quite a change in vibrations, to say the least! My daughter Samantha and I both soon realised how amazing the work was that The Hope Foundation had started in Kolkata just 12 years before, already establishing Residential Childcare Centres, healthcare centres, ambulances, night patrols and even a newly opened Hope Hospital for those in most acute medical conditions unable to be accepted into state hospitals.
HOPE’s work, day and night, ‘on the ground’ was astonishing. The environments in the slums and on the streets were sometimes quite challenging to witness, especially on the infamous Bhagar rubbish dump and Howrah slum next to tracks around the railway station. I saw that HOPE was clearly making a difference in this great city of colour, sounds, people, and extreme poverty and living conditions, which I had never before witnessed.
Not longer after, the Yoga Garden Party was born out of the energy and dedication of Ruth McNeil and Vikki Stevenson. We loved our annual gathering of 150-250 people for yoga, the glorious gardens, yummy snacks and unique gifts in Wimbledon, Avington House, and Bore Place in Kent. Steadily the awareness and support for The Hope Foundation grew within the yoga community in the UK, and more and more teachers and yoga practitioners were running or attending classes to raise funds to support HOPE.
I returned to Kolkata in 2018 with Vikki Stevenson to share yoga and HOPE with 12 others. While having expectations from my past visit, I was nonetheless staggered at the further spread and depth of HOPE’s amazing work, alongside the swift realisation that the need on the street is equally, if not even more necessary today.
One of the many memories of this second visit I especially cherish is the afternoon our whole yoga group gathered on the assembly roof of one of the Residential Childcare Centres for girls to record a Ganesha chant together on camera. Well, I started to lead the chant, microphones on, cameras rolling, and by the end of the first round all the older girls at the front were clearly, and vainly, trying to suppress giggling together as they looked at the chant sheet and tried to respond.
I progressively struggled to hold back my laughter as on every round to the chant the ‘responses’ to a certain line were infused with escalating giggles. It was later pointed out by one of the girls, I had got two of the Sanskrit words back-to-front within one of the lines in the chant sheet. It has brought back so many funny memories of giggling fits at school during inappropriate moments when it was also most difficult to stop.
All credit to the girls’ embodied knowledge of their ancient sacred language too.
I look forward to returning to visit the children and HOPE’s projects and personnel in Kolkata in the not-too-distant future. It is always an awakening and rewarding experience.
For more information about HOPE, contact info@thehopefoundation.org.uk
*From 1 July, the recording of Simon's class will be available via HomeYoga with all income going to HOPE. This recording was arranged by www.homeyoga.life where you can find other recorded classes with Simon Low, along with Zoom classes every Monday & Thursday morning.
