The Hiltingbury Community Centre (The Hilt) will be hosting a unique event on Sunday September 13th 2015 at 2:00pm. Two distinguished guests from India will be sharing how their passionate, selfless medical work in a rural area has transformed thousands of lives.
The dedication of Dr. Prakash Amte and his wife, Dr. Mandakini Amte, and their story has been made into a moving film, The Real Hero.
Last July, The Hilt held the Hampshire premiere of the Hindi film Hemalkasa (now renamed The Real Hero) by Samruddhi Porey. The uplifting film received positive reviews.
Both doctors dedicated their lives to social work. Their work in Hemalkasa village in the underprivileged district of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra has transformed the area. They built a hospital, school, and an animal orphanage.
They bring hope.
Dr. Prakash Amte’s work has now earned him the Mother Teresa Awards for social justice on Sunday 9th November 2014.
Dr. Amte’s work reflects a long family tradition of altruism and dedication for social justice. His father, Baba Amte, an Indian lawyer and social activist, devoted his life to India’s lower-caste Dalits, and especially to the care of those suffered from leprosy.
About Doctor Prakash Amte
“Presenting the real hero – Prakash Amte.
As the son of Baba Amte, a man who dedicated his entire life for the sake of lepers who were abandoned by their family or villagers, Prakash had his eyes set on doing something similar for society.
When asked to choose between the comforts of the city life and working for tribals, the trained medical practitioner chose the latter.
He moved to Hemalkasa in 1973 to start the Lok Biradari Prakalp (The People’s Brotherhood), a project for the integrated development of the Madia Gond, tribals in the forest of Gadchirolli district, Maharashtra which has now transformed into three things: a fully-fledged 40 bed hospital that caters to over 40000 patients annually, a residential school from 1st to 12th standard giving free education to nearly 650 tribal children, and a small sheltered enclosure to sustain orphaned babies of wild animals that houses probably one of the largest one man collection of wild animals in the country and the world at large.
Dr. Prakash Amte’s tribal welfare programmes have gained international recognition for their preservation of the culture of tribals of India, who are facing extinction through modern development, exploitation and disease.
Dr. Prakash Amte and his wife have toiled tirelessly under extreme hardship to help in the preservation of India’s tribals, so that he and his wife have been christened by their international admirers as the Albert Schweitzer of India, the 1952 Nobel Prize winner who discovered the treatment of tropical diseases while serving in the remotest jungles of equatorial Africa.”
From the website of Mother Teresa Awards
Update: 15th September 2015
At the reception event on Sunday, Lyn and Roger Clark presented a cheque, for £13,000, to Dr Prakash and Dr Manda Amte for the purchase of an X-ray digitiser to be installed in the Hemalkasa Hospital.
In a response Prakash expressed his gratefulness to Festival Medical Services and the work that so many people had all put into making this donation happen.
Sunday Lunch with Real Heroes
September 13 at 2:00pm
Dr. Prakash Amte and Dr. Manda Amte
The reception at the Hilt is being organised by the charity, Hemalkasa Health Foundation UK, in association with the Hiltingbury Community Association. Lunch will be followed by a short documentary, a Q&A, and Presentations.
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[…] Update: 8th September 2015: Event at the Hilt – Meet the Real Heroes: Doctor Prakash Amte and Doctor Manda Amte […]