There are lots of successful business people in the Indian community, and many of them donate to charity. Some even start their own foundations.
But it’s rare to find someone who is so committed, so passionate about his or her cause that they seem to spend most of their public life either talking about it or being in the field, making health camps and helping the needy in their home states.
Meet Kulwant Singh Dhaliwal, who made such an impassioned speech at a recent charity event that he blew the audience’s socks off. He puts his money where his mouth is and has helped a lot of people in his home state, Punjab.
Where it all started
Kulwant Dhaliwal took his degrees in Punjab, and emigrated to the UK at 27 years old. He built a successful business in fashion clothing retail and wholesale. He also built up a property portfolio that is now managed by his wife Manjit Kaur, as he retired at 45 to devote his life to charity. After losing his father-in-law to cancer in 2006, he decided to wage war against ignorance of the disease.
Cancer Attack
Mr. Kulwant Singh Dhaliwal is the Global Ambassador of charity ‘World Cancer Care.’ World Cancer Care was set up to help provide people with cancer detection facilities. The charity has tested thousands of individuals all over India for a variety of cancers, helping in both the detection and education about prevention. Since his appointment Kulwant has organised numerous camps across India reaching the smallest and the most remote villages to increase awareness and the early detection of cancer when it is curable.
The camps cater for cervix and prostate cancer along with breast and other forms of cancer. The disease leads to over 85% deaths in the state of Punjab.
Instead of taking donations, Mr. Dhaliwal inspires individuals to sponsor camps directly by requesting them to deliver World Cancer Care camps to their respective villages.
But it was due to his fight against cancer that Kulwant came to be speaking at Sterling Dental Foundation’s recent charity ball to raise money for charity walker Bobby Grewal.
Challenges
Kulwant said that the toughest part of his advocacy work was getting people to accept that he wanted a charity that would help at ground level. His aim was to help people at their source directly, in their villages, and provide help where it was needed. The challenge was to make people’s money count on the ground.
The Mission
Kulwant believes that the biggest gift that is of education and knowledge. He wants that, instead of giving money to a poor child, that they be given education so they can earn a living and eradicate poverty from their entire family.
He spreads western knowledge in India by using cancer educational and information material of the NHS, by translating them into different languages and distributing leaflets.
Kulwant wants money to go to go to education and treatment “Instead of temples and places of worship,” he says, as he did most forcefully at the Sterling Foundation Ball.
Kulwant is also the Chairman of the ‘Sardar Sant Singh Dhaliwal Trust’, an athletic charity. He himself walks around 200 miles a month, taking part in charitable walks like the 2013 British 10K London Run.
Mr. Dhaliwal set up the ‘Sant Singh Dhaliwal Trust’ in the name of his father to address female foeticide, the adolescent marriage of girls and a lack of education available to the poor.
After retiring, Mr. DhaliwaI discovered that foeticide was the reason that boys made up 70% of the children out of a population of around 3,000 in his birthplace, Bir Rauke in Punjab.
The trust mainly operates in this area and has led to reversing the female to male ratio with 107 females to 100 males in the area.
It has adopted female children, educates and clothes them, teaches them life skills and gives them financial help for their marriages.
The trust has provided school uniforms, books, stationary, and awards to over 337 children since 1991 with over 18 individuals now holding high ranking government jobs.
Kulwant said,” We take our buses round, the mammogram machines are on the buses. We find out if any of the family members have had cancer, and can take just six to seven minutes to do a mammogram.”
