A few months ago seven-year-old Gurya fell down a well while she was playing. In her village wells are just open holes in the ground. She was pulled out alive, but her leg was badly broken. She was taken to a local doctor, but because her mother had no money, some ragged blankets and a large brick was tied around her leg and she was sent home.

Gurya was recently lucky enough to become one of hundreds of children helped by Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya.

?She was at home for two months crying with pain,? said Bermudian Diane Kirwin who runs the programme. ?The hospital there sent her home because she was poor.

?We paid for her to have a full-length body cast. She was also severely malnourished. She is now healing nicely.?

Privilege-Sharing has branches in several other countries. Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya helps fund emergency surgeries and fixes deformities often caused by poor nutrition such as cleft palates and club feet. The cost of repairing a heart defect in a rural village in India costs about the same as a meal at a nice restaurant in Bermuda, but for poor people there it is an astronomical sum.

Last year, spoke with Mrs. Kirwin about her work in India. Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya was then in the process of building a school for 125 children in one of India?s poorest villages.

Mrs. Kirwin is a retired clinical social worker, and is a qualified addictions counsellor. She first came upon the town of Bodhgaya and the work of Privilege-Sharing several years ago during a backpacking trip across the state of Bihar which is in Northern India, bordering Nepal. In Bihar 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

While visiting Bodhgaya she met a small group of Indians who were working with the poor.

Privilege-Sharing was started by a wealthy, world-famous Swiss photographer who had studied the work of Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

?We are like a bridge between the east and the west,? said Mrs. Kirwin. ?We don?t try to westernise the people there. We try to enable them to do the work that they know has to be done. We believe that if everyone shares a little of the privileges that they have, everyone will be happier.?

Mrs. Kirwin currently lives in California, but this month returned to Bermuda for a visit. She spoke with about the work that Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya has accomplished in the last year.

?Since we last spoke, the school has been finished and is in operation,? said Mrs. Kirwin. ?It is called The Sishu Vihar School. The main thing is that we have started a sponsorship programme. We have printed up cards with the names and pictures of every student in the school. For $75 you can put one of these children through school for a year.

?People are liking the personal involvement. Some people are giving them as a Christmas gifts for people who have everything. Some people just don?t want any more material things and are happy with that.? The sponsorship money covers teachers? salaries, school supplies, electricity (when they get it connected), snacks and health checks. The charity also helps children in three ?informal schools? held in the outdoors, often in the shade of a tree.

?Some of the children at the school were beggars on the street,? said Mrs. Kirwin. ?None of them thought they would ever have the opportunity to go to school. Most schools cost money in India. The government doesn?t take care of these people because they are so poor they are not on the population chart. They are below the radar.?

The school is not an orphanage; it is a day school.

?The students have families to go home to, but if it wasn?t for the school many of them wouldn?t have anything to do during the day.

Mrs. Kirwin last visited the village in January and plans to go back next year. She said that every time she goes she sees the fruit of her labour.

?One little boy, Akhilesh, was born with a very pointed foot,? she said. ?Last time I was there we helped him to get surgery. He has leg braces, and now he plays soccer. Now he is in a hostel and he goes to school.?

On this visit to India she read stories to the children and handed out school bookbags. Some of the children were so excited to get their bookbags that they ran home leaving their shoes at school.

One day Mrs. Kirwin and other volunteers fed 400 people curried rice and vegetables. The cost was equivalent to a tank of gas to fill a car in Bermuda.

Last year a student in Bermuda donated money to buy desks for the students. The school now has two desks that seat eight children. The children take turns sitting at the desks, one day the girls and the next day the boys. Kind Bermudians also donated 200 school uniforms to the students.

?Some of the children come to school dressed in rags,? said Mrs. Kirwin. ?The uniforms give the students a sense of pride and the chance to be on an equal footing with one another.?

Mrs. Kirwin is now raising money to purchase a piece of land so that a second school can be built in another rural village.

She has also worked to strengthen the administrative side of Privilege-Sharing Bodhgaya. The charity now has a Board of Trustees to take over the day to day running of the charity.

It was very hard for Mrs. Kirwin to run the charity all the way from California, especially since she does not speak Hindi.

For more information about sponsoring a child, telephone Lynn Hunt at 799-4868 or email: llt1002000yahoo.co.uk