Please sir, can you help me?!Print this page
“Please sir, can you help me?!” are the words Gerard can remember from his very first contact with Ranjit Rout. Gerard Elkhuizen, Assembly Engineer at Valk Welding, has been in India four times already en this has changed his perspective at life tremendously. You will not easily find him complaining. He has seen a lot of the poverty and misery in India. Gerard instantly explains which key problem is highly related to the poverty and misery: "there are 1 milliard people living in India and I can not help them all. That is the reason I asked this man what makes his situation different than those of others”.
It turned out Ranjit is the only person making money in his big family, consisting of 14 persons and his son under the age of one year old, had a very serious harelip. In Holland such a child would have received the right care without much trouble, but in India such a child is often disabled for a lifetime and sometimes even sentenced to death, because the parents do not have the sources to fulfil the high cost rates of the long-term care. The family already had to sell a big part of their needed land (where they cultivated vegetables and grain for the family) in order to be able to pay for the first operation.
This is how a relationship started to grow with the family Rout. “They live in the village Votaka, Orissa, which is one of the most pover states of the country. Ranjits father died when he was about 13 years old which caused him to cancel his study to make money for his mother, his 3 brothers, 2 sisters and his childless uncle and aunt”. In the meanwhile, the family has expended because of the marriage of Ranjit and also one of his brothers and the births of 3 children. “Since they had to sell that land the family had less food, so we did not only offer help for medical care but also for food”, Gerard states.
With every holiday Gerard and his wife also bring clothes and other important goods along with them to India. Next to that they have bought a cow (EUR. 60) and all Ranjits family members are vaccinated (EUR.117 for 11 people!). For two years already they are also sponsoring Ranjits youngest brother, Jayanta, with his education and the 2 younger children of Ranjit also go to school, where they –along with other things- get to learn to speak English.
Jayanta has already finished the first part of his education as bank employee with very good results and has now continued with an education in computers so that he will also be able to take care of the family in the future. Related to this education, he has received a generous gift from Valk Welding: 3 laptops for him and the other students to use for their education. Gerard is very happy with this way of sponsoring by Valk Welding. “It’s a gift that adds very much value to their possibilities, because it creates great opportunities for their development”.