Mission

We’re the Venkat Trust, a small Hove based charity which for the past 21 years has been changing the educational landscape of Kovalam, a poor fishing village in south east India, near Chennai. We have an extraordinary back story. Sylvia Holder, our founder, was in India on business when she met 12-year-old Venkat on Kovalam beach. Charming, cheeky and very skinny, he invited her to tour his village and then asked her for £10 for his next year’s school fees. She agreed and said she’d pay for his education for as long as it took, never thinking he’d even get through secondary school. When he graduated from Madras University she was bursting with pride. They’d stayed in touch over the years and Sylvia had visited him too. Aged 27, just as his career was taking off, Venkat was killed in a road accident. Sylvia was heartbroken, he’d been like her surrogate son and so, in his memory, she set up the Venkat Trust to give the children of Kovalam the same opportunity Venkat had had. Since then, the charity has transformed the village primary school, built a 1000 pupil higher secondary school, set up a 400-child sponsorship programme, pays for 19 teachers and each year it pays the university fees for 75 young people. Lives have been transformed. Where once a life of poverty lay ahead for the young people of Kovalam, now they can look forward to successful careers – lawyers, doctors, bankers, IT and AI specialists etc. In India, the Trust is run by Janakiraman (JR), Venkat’s brother. The Trust is a wonderful success and has a great group of supporters who have helped it go from strength to strength. But what we aren’t able to do is to use social media to tell our story to new people around the world, to bring new supporters on board and, most importantly, to raise funds.

Category

Education and Skills

Additional Information

Our website is www.venkattrust.org.uk and we’re on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/venkat_trust/?hl=en and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/VenkatTrust/?locale=en_GB Accidental Lives, co-authored by Sylvia Holder and Lindsay Swan, was published by Black Spring Press at the end of last year. The royalties are going to the Venkat Trust.