It took therapist Lynn Hunt just a few minutes to decide to go to India to help the charity Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya.

Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya recently helped to build a school for 125 children in a poor village in India, and also funds medical treatment for people there who can?t afford it. Bermudian Diane Kirwin runs Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya and is its great champion.

?I heard Diane speaking at a friend?s house,? said Mrs. Hunt. ?I was inspired by her compassion and passion for the work that she was doing. I had always wanted to go to India. It felt like a great way to go out there and see the country, but also to help the poor and needy in India.?

When she told her husband, photographer Antoine Hunt, about her plans, he said he wanted to go also.

?The trip to India was very interesting on a lot of levels,? said Mr. Hunt. ?Everyone always talks about India. They say you either love it or hate it. It didn?t shock me at all. It is what it is.

?I use to go to Mexico a lot to do sculpture. In a lot of ways, rural areas are pretty much the same the world over.?

The Hunts thought that they were going to be helping to build the school, but when they arrived in Bodhgaya the structure was completed.

?It was more about giving Diane support and taking things over and buying things for the kids such as school supplies,? said Mr. Hunt. ?Because of what everyone says about being over there we decided to only go for a short time. If you hate it then you are trapped.?

Mrs. Hunt said they didn?t hate it. In fact, when it was time to leave they didn?t want to go.

?We could have stayed indefinitely,? she said. ?It just has that effect on you.?

It was not easy for them to get to Bodhgaya. Travelling from Bristol, England, it took 40 hours. ?When we arrived in Bodhgaya it was 4 a.m.,? Mrs. Hunt said. ?It was like a scene out of a Michael Jackson video where all you saw were people coming out of the shadows, beggars and children and people with nowhere to live. Many people were just pulling themselves along because there are so many people there with polio. A lot of people, literally, live on the street.? The Hunts waited for an hour at the train station which was located in Bihar, an Indian state known for its high crime rates.

?We had Privilege-Sharing coming to pick us up, and we waited for an hour before they actually arrived,? she said. ?Because it is such a dangerous region, to leave the train station in darkness was considered taking your life into your own hands. It was known as bandit country. We had four big suitcases full of supplies.?

The Privilege-Sharing van had arrived but was expecting a white couple.

Eventually, the situation ironed itself out, the van driver found them and they were off to the village.

They arrived at 6 a.m., got an hour?s sleep and then were immediately off and running with Mrs. Kirwin.

?The first village we saw really set the scene for the rest of the journey,? said Mrs. Hunt. ?We were going to different villages seeing what they needed. We were able to go out with a medical team. The first day was going out and administering first aid to people and children who really had nothing.?

For Mrs. Hunt it was a real eye opener to see babies that were so malnourished that a nine month old looked like a six week old. They also saw babies with scabies, parasites and worms, and many diseases that were preventable.

?In these villages if the crops fail you don?t eat,? Mrs. Hunt said. ?Many of the villages are now becoming dependent on Privilege-Sharing?s help.?

However, she said that Privilege-Sharing is not about hand-outs, it is about helping people to help themselves.

?It is about showing them how to do things like planting and irrigation,? said Mr. Hunt. ?At the school there are kids that because of the whole class system are not going to get into a private school.

?These kids have more of a chance because they will have some kind of education, and will know more about the world than their parents have which is just day-to-day survival.?

When the Hunts visited the Privilege-Sharing school, Mrs. Hunt played games with the children and helped them with art projects.

?What surprised me was their willingness to learn,? she said. ?They had so much enthusiasm to want to learn. The girls are considered to be second-class citizens in many ways.

?They are not encouraged as much as the boys, because the boys are the ones that really support the family down the line. To give these children at a young age a sense of identity just by showing them games and leadership skills was wonderful.?

One day she met a little girl, Puja, who had suffered from polio. Privilege-Sharing had provided her with leg braces.

?She came one day when the school was having their religious ceremony,? Mrs. Hunt said.

?She was an example of how Privilege-Sharing was working. She was one of the first ones to get operated on.

?We made up these little meals for the children on this particular day. Puja sat there with her food packet all day. I asked why she didn?t open her food packet.

?Diane said she was going to take it home and share it with her family.

?It was only a little plate and she sat there all day holding it.?

Mrs. Hunt met another little girl who was carrying around a younger sibling.

?The baby looked to be about three months and it turned out to be nine months,? said Mrs. Hunt.

?I offered to hold the baby while the girl ate her food. The little girl was so worried that I was going to take the baby away, that Diane said to me give the baby back because I was causing the girl stress. The baby was her responsibility. She came from a family of ten.

?They just look after each other. People say they shouldn?t have so many children, but we are talking about people who have no idea about birth control and things in the western world we take for granted.?

The doctors and health workers who help Privilege-Sharing talk to the villagers about family planning, and they teach the children basic hygiene such as washing their hands before they eat.

Mrs. Hunt said she had to learn to accept that she could help the people there a little bit, but at the end of the day it was their experience.

?There was a lot of happiness,? she said. ?There is a happiness that in some ways us in the west don?t see. The children at the school were just so grateful and enthusiastic about everything.?

While there, Mr. Hunt took photographs while an American camera crew filmed a documentary.

?The children were very inquisitive into the nature of the photography thing,? said Mrs. Hunt.

?Between the man doing the filming and Antoine taking photographs the kids had a ball when we were there.?

Now Mr. Hunt would like to put together an exhibition of the photographs he took in India. The photographs would be sold to raise money for Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya.

? I was trying to put a show together, but life gets in the way of things,? said Mr. Hunt.

Mrs. Hunt said anyone interested in helping them put together the show should contact them. She intends to return to Bodghaya in January.

?The first visit was like a trial run,? she said.

?I never believed there would be so much to do.?