The Vellore Rural Community Trust (VRCT), a subcommittee of Friends of Vellore UK, concentrates solely on projects in the rural outskirts of Vellore. Most people in India live in rural areas and access to health and development resources can be poor. CMC has a remote unit, the Rural Unit for Health and Social Affairs (RUHSA) 25km from Vellore town which delivers health and social development services to a wide local rural area with a population of 120,000.

RUHSA’s work is based on the belief that: ‘Health is a state of positive well-being and not merely the absence of disease.’ RUHSA’s programmes include all aspects of rural development; agriculture, animal husbandry, adult education, vocational training, and help for the elderly and people with disabilities.

VRCT collaborates closely with the experienced team at RUHSA developing innovative projects and providing start-up funding. We continue to work with the local population and staff at RUHSA to develop the programs further to become at least partially self-sustaining. VRCT reviews all programs on an annual basis, visiting the work directly in India and monitoring the progress to ensure the projects deliver measurable benefits to the local population.

You can read more about individual projects on the pages under this menu. Current projects include elderly care centres, the Pachaikili children’s play centre and farmers’ clubs. For the last two years we have been funding a project to try to address the issue of suicide amongst teenagers by providing an environment for them to discuss issues that they may not feel able to at home. We are also funding a project that is screening for developmental delay in children and training parents and other care givers in caring for those children.

The VRCT Committee is chaired by Dr Arabella Onslow.  She regularly visits RUHSA.  Read her blog here. Other Trustees are: Dr Geoff Levine, Revd Joy Levine, Mrs Pam Morris, Mr Richard Rajamanickam, Miss Asha Senapati and Mrs Sally Whittingham.