Charity for India's rural poor finds a home in Arlington Heights
As two searching pilgrims, Tom Chitta and Geetha Yeruva nine years ago stepped off their jumbo jet at O'Hare International Airport, cringed a bit at the radical climate change from their hometown in India, and headed for Arlington Heights.
Their mission — which they were starting from scratch — was to pitch a base camp from where they could be reaching back to help the “rural poor” in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Besides repeated prayers, their hope lay only in having learned that an Arlington Heights married couple once adopted a three-month-old boy from an adoption agency in India. Now, they were about to meet the parents of this child, Gail and Al Walton.
Momentum for their base camp picked up amazingly fast. The “kindness of strangers” first came with Katie McCambridge, who provided the Chittas with living quarters in her condominium for two months. After that, several other families, perceiving the mission zeal of Tom and Geetha, shared their homes with them. The Waltons gave them an office, and Gail donated her full-time services as executive secretary. Soon, the Chittas had their base camp for a fledgling not-for-profit organization, Foundation for Children in Need (FCN).
But the milestone for FCN, Tom said in this interview, was when Rev. Bill Zavaski, pastor of St. James Catholic Church in Arlington Heights, offered them a parish-owned home.
“Fr. Bill was a blessing in our lives,” Tom said. “He changed everything for us.” Then came an annual FCN “thanks giving” banquet, sponsored by St. James and emceed by the foundation's future board secretary, Brian Reynolds, a musician who plays his drums as fervently as he promotes FCN.
Next came eight years of the Chittas crisscrossing America by automobile and jet, annually averaging 20,000 miles to bring their FCN message to more than 300 Catholic parishes.
“I don't know of two harder working people,” Reynolds said. “Tom is not able to slow down. He has only one speed: ‘faster.' ”
Nowadays, Tom, 56, and his 50-year-old physician wife, Geetha Yeruva, provide leadership for an organization that brings critical aid to almost 5,000 Indian children, students, and the elderly. They spend six months each year at their home in Porumamilla, a town of 30,000 people in the continent's southeast, about 200 miles from the city of Hyderabad.
There, one sees the fruits of the Chitta's seemingly indefatigable labors and of the loyalties of thousands of American donors and volunteers. This is where 2,200 children and college students receive aid, where another 2,000 non-sponsored students annually receive dictionaries and notebooks, and where care is given to more than 500 individuals afflicted with deafness, blindness, lameness and physical deformities.
FCN school is spread over eight acres surrounded by mostly flat farmland of sugarcane, lentils, sunflowers, peanuts, and — if water is available — rice. Many of the farmers here are unskilled day laborers who, working in summer with temperatures of 90 to 110 degrees, earn $3 to $4.
Most people are Hindus but there also is a good-sized Muslim population.
Homes do not have running water; mosquitoes, malnutrition and sanitation are problems; diseases include typhoid, tuberculosis, pneumonia and Hepatitis A.
FCN has separate hostels for 90 boys and girls grades one through 10. The students are brought in from outlying villages and provided with education, food, clothing and medical care. Another 250 children daily walk up to three miles to attend school and get money for attending. FCN also provides free food, clothing and medical care for 40 elderly people.
Because many older children have to stay at home to look after their younger siblings and because of child labor abuses, FCN staff must encourage parents to have their children educated.
One success story is Bramhaiah Chintakunta, a college history major from a poverty-stricken family whose father died when he was age four, forcing his mother to work in the fields.
“I am so grateful for a college education upon which to build the dreams of my life,” he said. Another success is Parameswari Palle, a college freshman studying engineering.
“I now have a bright future because of FCN,” she said.
FCN, which has a paid staff of 33 people in India, spends 4 percent of its money on fundraising and 3 percent on administration.
Reynolds said that the Chittas take only a small stipend for themselves. “Everything is for the kids.”
Money goes further in India, with a social worker making $50 a month and a new classroom costing $6,000. Information is at fcn-usa.org or write to FCN, P.O. Box 1247, Arlington Heights, 60006-1247.
Tom, whose parents were primary school teachers, obtained a master's degree in pastoral theology and counseling from Loyola University in Chicago. Geetha, whose father was a military officer and nother was a homemaker, obtained her medical degree from St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India.
They met while working in Catholic parish ministries in Kadapa, India. They were inspired by the work of Mother Teresa, whom Geetha met when she was 17.
“I see something special in you,” Mother Teresa told her. “You little girl are going to be a doctor and help the needy.”
Years later, with her medical degree in hand, Geetha told her husband: “When a saint tells you to do something, you do it.”
Ÿ Robert R. Schwarz, a member of St. James Catholic Church, lives in Arlington Heights. A former executive of a chain of suburban newspapers, he has traveled in India as manager of leadership development for Lions Clubs International.
The FCN story
<B>Organization:</B> Foundation for Children in Need
<B>Location:</B> 800 N. Pine Ave., Arlington Heights; Kapada and Porumamilla, India
<B>Annual budget:</B> About $700,000
<B>Administrative and fundraising costs: </B>7 percent
<B>Founded: </B>2002
<B>Founders:</B> Thomas Chitta and his wife Dr. Geetha Yeruva
Total 2009 compensation for the founders: $33,382*
<B>Average workweek for the founders:</B> 57 hours each*
<B>Website:</B> fcn-usa.org
*IRS Form 990