Kerala: Indian woman asks for £5 help, gets £54,000 in donations

Kerala crowdfunding Girija Harikumar

An Indian lady who asked for assistance to feed her kids has received numerous rupees in contributions from strangers on social media.

Subhadra, 46, who lives in the southern condition of Kerala, acquired asked her son’s teacher for five hundred rupees ($6; £5) to buy food right after her husband died.

Moved simply by her plight, the teacher started a crowdfunding campaign on social media.

By Sunday, the family had obtained 5. 5m rupees in donations.

Subhadra, who uses just one name, had been striving to make ends meet considering that her husband’s passing away in August.

She couldn’t search for a job as the youngest of her three sons has cerebral palsy and needs constant care.

On Friday, she reached out to Girija Harikumar, a teacher at the local school where her center child studies, with regard to help as her children had nothing to eat.

Ms Harikumar, a Hindi vocabulary teacher, told the particular BBC that the lady had asked the particular student, Abhishek, to tell her if his family was facing problems after his father’s death. It was the first time the son or his mother had asked for assist.

“I gave her 1, 000 rupees and told her I am going to do something, ” Ms Harikumar says.

The girl then visited the family and saw they were living in grinding poverty.

“There was just a handful of grains in the kitchen and the kids had nothing to consume, ” Ms Harikumar says.

“I thought there was no point giving Subhadra small amounts of money now and then as it would be completely inadequate for the family members, ” she adds.

On Friday evening, Ms Harikumar wrote a blog post on Facebook regarding the family’s plight and asked people to assist by sending any money they could afford. She also shared Subhadra’s bank account details within the post, so that the money could be directly transferred to her.

The publish went viral and by Monday, Subhadra offers received 5. 5m rupees from type strangers.

Some of the money will be used to finish a house that Subhadra’s husband began building before he died. The rest will be deposited in the bank for their expenses.

The fund-raising appeal has now already been closed.

Presentational grey line

Reading more India stories from the BBC:

Presentational grey line