For those not familiar with the work of RTU, the focus is on helping children, supporting them and their families within local communities where possible. If this is not possible, the four RTU Children’s Villages act as a safety net, providing care in a community setting with a foster mother, brothers and sisters. Each house in the Children's Villages have around 6 - 8 children and a foster mother. Children admitted have often lost one or both parents to diseases such as TB or HIV, to accidents, alcoholism, suicide or domestic violence. Sometimes a sole parent or grandparent have to resort to asking RTU to care for their child/grandchild because they can no longer cope; either financially, emotionally or physically.

Last year, RTU cared for 686 children in their Children's Villages and hostels (from the age of 13 to 18) and supported a further 157 young people through college. 1,400 children are educated through RTU's Primary and High schools, balwadies (pre-schools). They also provide mobile science and computer labs, which travel out to local state schools which have no such facilities for the children in their care. These mobile labs are staffed by teachers from RTU. In addition, there were 20,965 free consultations in their Pushpurani and physiotherapy clinics in 2024/25, RTU also directly supported children from families affected by HIV/AIDS. There are 1,629 women members of the 110 self-help groups in 28 villages which RTU helped to set up and continue to support as well as mobile tailoring units and they have built 9,000 houses to date and since 1980 have bored 2,497 new wells and there is so much more still to do - to paraphrase the title of the book on the life of the founder of RTU, James Kimpton, Margaret's uncle.

Within these statistics, every number represents the life of a unique person whose future has been transformed – not to mention the positive impact on their families and communities. Please help continue the vital work of Reaching the Unreached.

We would love to raise more for their great work. We will keep you updated as we prepare for our various challenges; we hope you enjoy our journeys and of course, we will let you know how we get on.

Thank you

David Lambert