In 1995, John and Claire Osborne saw an opportunity to support a small orphanage in Bangalore, India. The Raj Orphanage had just nine children and was run by an Indian couple dedicated to educating children from the quarry slums in Bangalore. With a budding IT industry and enormous multi-national investment, Bangalore is one of the most westernised of India’s rapidly-expanding cities.
But alongside the rising professional classes are pockets of profound poverty, notably among the families working in bonded labour, a modern form of slavery in the nearby granite mines, for the equivalent of AU$1 a day. Under John and Claire’s care, the orphanage is now a highly respected school and has taken in 600 quarry children who would otherwise have been destined to a lifetime of hard labour.
Fifty of these children have graduated, most of whom are now in colleges around Bangalore. OYA Financial is also engaged with communities closer to home. Every year the company sponsors a number of carefully selected charities, community organisations and school groups. John, Claire and the staff at OsborneYuille are committed to continuing to support others less fortunate. They believe that it is in helping those who cannot help themselves that we can have the satisfaction of seeing lives changes and potential realised.
