We are a group of people sponsors, members, supporters and friends who, for no personal gain, wish to contribute to allay the poverty and dire misery in which a large part of Indian society lives.
Many people, when they hear of our Association for the first time, ask how Akshy India came into being. For this reason, a brief introduction to our short but important history is given below.
After making numerous trips to India and being enchanted by the country and its culture, in the winter of 2005, Raquel Mason visited Bodhgaya in Bihar attracted by its spirituality.
There she had the good fortune to meet Chandeshwar Kumar, a young teacher, who took her to visit his village, Amwan, 4 kms. from Bodhgaya.
During this visit she was able to appreciate in greater depth the true situation of rural India, the unfair caste distinctions, the needs of the population and more especially those of the children.
That same day, during a walk around the village, in the part where the Dalits or untouchables live, she met a little boy called Akshy who had a terrible eye infection. Her attention was caught by the sad look on his face, dirty and unprotected. She was moved by so much misery around her and began to realize that what we consider normal, such as going to a doctor, was a luxury in that village.
It was not the first time Raquel had seen poverty in India but she felt she could not go away from these people and forget. She found a doctor to give the boy the eye treatment he needed and paid the bill: ONE EURO; this was the moment when Raquel was struck by how much we could do in India with so little money as well as by the conviction that it was impossible to look away.
She came back to Spain some days later, but that day in the village and the image of the little boy continued to return again and again. She could not remain impassive after seeing so much need, remembering the living conditions of these children and how so little can go so far.
A time comes to us all and that experience gave her the opportunity to do something for others, which in itself is a great privilege.
Chandeshwar Kumar, the teacher, had talked to her about his intention of teaching the village children and Raquel realized that the only way to improve conditions for Indian children of this social sector is through education in the widest sense - not only academically but also morally - and so offering them the possibility of becoming dignified human beings.
Two months later she was sending financial aid to cover the earliest needs of school materials, in spite of not having any guarantee that the funds would be used in the right way. But she was not mistaken, and in the summer of 2006 the little school at Amwan began to work.
Aware of the need to create a structure and organization to subsidize the school expenses, Raquel contacted her friends Elena and Adela, who immediately became attracted by the project and so the 3 friends decided to found an association in Spain to help the children of Amwan.
Working as a team, the association was reaching its goals little by little until the Association Akshy India was founded in January 2007.
From then on the real project starts to develop and the friends begin to look for people interested in sponsoring or giving donations. They wanted such persons to take part and have the opportunity to offer their own "grains of sand" so that, all together, they could allay, in some small way, the suffering of the poorest of the poor.