Her Kids Had No Food. Her Request for Help Snowballed

A woman's moment of desperation turned into her moment of good fortune. The BBC reports on the overflow of financial support an Indian widow has experienced this month. The 46-year-old, identified as Subhadra, lost her husband in August. She has three sons, the youngest of which has cerebral palsy, which prevents her from working. Last Friday she sought help from a teacher at the school one of her sons attends. The teacher, Girija Harikumar, had instructed the boy to reach out if the family needed help following his father's death. This was the family's first such request. Subhadra asked for 500 rupees (about $6) in order to buy food, as the family had nothing to eat.

Harikumar gave her double that amount, but a subsequent visit to Subhadra's home made clear to her that occasionally supplying the family with small amounts of money wouldn't be enough to sustain them. "There was just a handful of grains in the kitchen and the children had nothing to eat," Harikumar says of what she encountered in the home. She added to the Deccan Herald, "Even the tiled roof used to leak in rain. Subhadra had no source of income, except for the meager government assistance for her bed-ridden son." So on Friday, Harikumar took to Facebook asking anyone who could to donate; she provided Subhadra's bank account details in the post. Many people were apparently moved: By Monday, she had received 5.5 million rupees, or about $66,000. (More uplifting news stories.)