Welcome to The Sunny Trust

The Sunny Trust was set up in January 2006 specifically for the benefit of the people of the Tura Diocese in the State of Meghalaya, North East India.

In the summer of 2005 Fr. Sunny Joseph Mavelil, originally from Kerala in the South of India, won an opportunity to study in England for 5 months. He stayed with his brother Benni, in Stourport and during his short time with us, we, the parishioners of St Wulstan’s, Stourport and The Holy Family, Bewdley were so deeply touched by his commitment, determination, clear vision and infectious enthusiasm that we resolved to set up a trust fund and to maintain regular contact to support Fr. Sunny in his work. And so “The Sunny Charitable Trust” was born and is now a Registered Charity (No. 1112800).

The Trust is run by a small group of parishioners from the two churches and aims to provide relief from financial hardship and disadvantage, to advance education for people of all ages and to help relieve sickness and improve healthcare among the people of the Tura Diocese.

The Sunny Trust does this by supporting the work of Bakdil, a Registered NGO set up by the Catholic Diocese of Tura to act as its Social Services arm. Bakdil is responsible for developing a programme of health and social care for its people, enabling social development and empowerment.

Fr. Sunny is the Director of Bakdil and together, he and his team are working to try to reduce the number of deaths of mothers and children during childbirth, to fight the spread of diseases such as Malaria and to educate and empower the Garo people and support their own self development.

The State of Meghalaya is the 27th most deprived state out of the 28 in India. The size of the Diocese is some 8,000 sq km and most of the parishes are very remote, with intermittent electricity and many with no land telephone line or mobile phone connections. Therefore the success of Bakdil’s programme depends on the ability to travel and take the new Health and Social Care Programmes to the remote villages.

Trustees and parishioners have visited the Tura Diocese nearly every year since 2006 to see the work of Fr. Sunny and his team at Bakdil. Having witnessed first hand the hardships faced by these people, we hope that sharing our experiences will help the fundraising efforts of The Sunny Trust.

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