My name is Chris Hyde. My wife and I have been resident here in Udaipur for over five years. India is our home. We are an older couple who live on our state pension. Our time is spent teaching (unpaid work) and helping the less fortunate of our society.

For two winters now we have run a scheme to provide good quality blankets and clothing to the very poor of our city.

We are NOT an NGO or a charity; we are just two people doing what we can to help our fellow man.

EVERY rupee donated goes to buying blankets. We take NOTHING for expenses or wages. Everyone who works with us as volunteers does so at their own cost. All donations are recorded and a receipt given. Full records of cash in and where it was spent are kept.

‘Warm Aid’ originally sprang from the idea of giving our spare winter clothing to the poor and has grown beyond our wildest hopes.

Following the huge success of ‘Warm Aid 2016’ last year we repeated it again this year ‘Warm Aid 2017’

Literally thousands of people have benefited from ‘Warm Aid’ since last year, the majority being women, children and the homeless.

We now have an established distribution network for clothes to the poor through our partners URCreator NGO who are doing a wonderful job in Rajasthan. They actively collect clothing and distribute it with toys and educational material to the poor.

We again ran a drive this year to collect as many winter clothes as we could and distribute them to the poor before the coldest months of winter.

As part of the effort to save lives among the very poor, that is the families who sleep on the city streets with no cover, not even a tent and those who spend the winter nights huddled in doorways and under shop fronts to try and keep warm sleeping on cold marble.

These people we helped by collecting cash to buy good quality blankets to give them.  In all last year we gave away over 200 blankets over the Christmas period and another 50 later.

This year we have volunteers working with us; Our sincere thanks to; Harshit Soni, Peter Joseph, Harshit Saini and all those many people who have given their time, money and energy for this cause.

We plan this year to give more blankets than last year to the needy. We have already exceeded 300 and are aiming for 500.

A sympathetic wholesaler who supports us and gives blankets at wholesale prices means we can help more people. Thanks to Varshit Karanapuria, Bapu Bazaar, Udaipur.

The need here for warm clothing and blankets through the winter months is huge. People in our City die from the cold every year. Sadly it is a fact that when the warmer weather comes the very poor sell their spare clothes and blankets to buy food or gas. At least those clothes and blankets then move on to help others in need.

As you can appreciate it is a never ending cycle of poverty and need.

We are trying to help as many people as we can.

As we say in our advertising material ‘Please help us to help them’

E mail drwatsonsmate@yahoo.com or WhatsApp 9672901151 or our Facebook page for details of how YOU can help.