The Cause:

Jim Cannon is a management consultant who specialises in organisational behaviour. Together with his wife Sue, he has created a Foundation to fund the education of hundreds of children in one of the poorest regions of India. In 1999, he and his wife Sue were sent out to India to offer advice to a struggling Christian charity. On one trip he went to Bihar, a remote state some 17 hours from Kolkutta, where, somewhat to his surprise, he was invited to open a new school that had just been completed. While he was there, he heard an old man say that he could now die happy, because his grandchildren would not now grow up illiterate as he and his sons had done. With this, Jim and Sue knew they had found their cause.

The Project:

Creating their own Foundation under the GivingWorks umbrella and raising money tirelessly, Jim and Sue were able to build another school in a nearby village, which opened in 2005. Since then, with continuing support from the Foundation, it has provided an education to 120 children. But the environment in this region can be hostile, and in late 2009 a cyclone devastated the area and the school was badly damaged: Jim and Sue had to redouble their efforts and raise new funds, and within a few months it was rebuilt and re-opened.

The Results:

“You can’t put a value on a project like this,” says Jim. “It is quite simply the most worthwhile and important thing we have ever done, or ever will do. It is particularly important to us to know that by providing funds through our Foundation, we have been able to endow our school indefinitely, and it will continue its vital work long after we have gone.”

‍