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In 1998 John Margetson travelled to Burma where he was appalled by the conditions that the vast majority of children had to live in. He was determined to try to do something to alleviate some of this suffering. The question was how was it possible to help these poor children. His initial work in 2001 was in Senegal in West Africa where he and Michele Claiborne now a trustee of Love A Child set up a small organisation HELP to try to relieve some of the health problems faced by the local community in the Casamar area.
In the autumn of 2002 John and Michele travelled to India. Their itinerary included an invitation to a Tibetan monastery at Dolanji in the North of the country, there they discovered a monastic home for lay refugee children—The Bon Children’s Home run by the monks. The monastery is based on the Bon Po tradition; the original religion of Tibet before Buddhism arrived. John left with the profiles of five children to be sponsored. “I didn’t have a clue if l could find enough sponsors but l knew my girlfriend, myself and friends would support these five children.” Thus ‘Love a Child’ was born. Steadily the number of sponsored children increased and in 2004 a general fund was started to help with the construction of new buildings at the home.
However Burma was still niggling away at John’s mind and then fate stepped in. A friend, who he hadn’t seen for ten years suddenly turned up in Spain and during dinner the subject of Burma came up. To John’s surprise he discovered that his friend's neighbour was the Secretary General of the Burma Forces Welfare Association, Lt. Col. Sam Pope. A meeting was arranged in the autumn of 2004 and the Burma project of ‘Love a Child’ became reality.
In the autumn of 2005 John returned to Burma to initiate the first project. Also in 2005, after discussions with trustees and Spanish sponsors it was decided to look for a project in a Spanish speaking country (The Spanish are very generous with their donations to charity, but understandably they prefer to give to a Spanish speaking project).
The foundation now operates in india and Nepal with Tibetan refugee children, in Burma (Myanmar) and Ecuador. The mainstay of our work is to develop the sponsorship of children - living accommodation, food, clothes, health and schooling. Our number of sponsored children is steadily growing and our infrastructure programmes are becoming larger. It is our aim to steadily increase our network of volunteer co-ordinators where necessary and also our representatives and fund raisers throughout the world.
Sponsor a child now
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