The New Heroes

The New Heroes is a PBS series hosted by Robert Redford on social entrepreneurs, who are making the world a better place. On their website you can watch a clip of two Indian social entrepreneurs - Inderjit Khurana and Dr. V:

Inderjit Khurana - Teachers Teach Poor Children at Train Stations (wmv)

India is home to nearly half a billion children, many of whom live in extreme poverty. The Indian government has not been able to find a way to educate children who spend their days begging, stealing and selling their bodies to survive. Inderjit Khurana, a teacher in a town 300 miles south of Calcutta, noticed that the children of the slums spend their days begging on the train platforms, rather than going to school. So she decided that if the children couldn’t come to school, she’d bring the school to them. With teachers to guide and care for them, the children develop hope for their future. Because the government refuses to help her, Khurana has to rely on charitable donations to raise the $12,000 a year that funds all 12 schools she now operates.

Dr. V and David Green - Affordable Eye Surgery Prevents Blindness in India (wmv) 

Southern India has one of the highest rates in the world of unnecessary blindness caused by cataracts. And, as a saying in that desperately poor region goes, “the blind man is a mouth without hands.” Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, an eye surgeon better known as Dr. V, founded a hospital specializing in cataract surgery based on a combination of Eastern spiritualism and Western capitalism. A young American businessman named David Green who met Dr. V realized that the high cost of buying lenses from commercial manufacturers – at $300 a piece – was limiting the number of patients the doctor could assist. Surmounting tremendous obstacles, Green built a factory right next to Dr. V’s hospital, where he manufactures lenses for $1 each and sells them for $4. Today, every two paying patients enable Dr. V to do four surgeries for free.

 

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