Palma tribute to Spaniard who improved lives of India's poor

THE British widow of the late Spanish humanitarian and aid worker Vicente Ferrer, who passed away in July, is in Majorca this week giving a series of talks and conferences about how the Vicente Ferrer Foundation is continuing to help the poor in India.

Ferrer first volunteered to go to India in 1952 and by the time of his death, the foundation had opened and supported 1'200 village schools serving 125'000 children and employing 2'000 teachers, opened three general hospitals employing 1'300 staff, an Aids clinic, libraries, family-planning clinics and planted three million trees in Anantapur, one of the poorest regions of India. Now his English wife, the former journalist Anna Ferrer and one of their three children, Moncho, are carrying on his work and this is what Anna is talking about this week.

Yesterday, speaking at the Council of Majorca's Institute for Social Affairs, Anna Ferrer, said that what the foundation could need right now is a small army of volunteer chefs and farmers to go out to the region and help.