‘God Provides’: Foundation for Children in Need Brings Hope to India’s Poorest Families, Thanks to Colorado Catholics
- Jacqueline Gilvard Landry
- Jun 29
- 5 min read
Inspired by faith and supported by generous Catholics, one couple’s mission is transforming lives through life-changing surgeries, scholarships and care for the elderly, disabled and disadvantaged in the poorest communities in India.
In their part-time home in Arlington Heights, Illinois, Dr. Geetha Yeruva and her husband, Tom Chitta, have a sign on their wall that reads: “God Provides.” They say their faith in that maxim is what sustains them in supporting India’s “poorest of the poor” through their Foundation for Children in Need (FCN).
Yeruva, who is a family practice physician, and Chitta founded FCN in 2002 to “give back to India.” The nonprofit’s charitable services range from educating needy youth to transforming children with cleft palate and cleft lip, all with the generous support of Coloradan Catholics.
‘Giving back to India’
And Yeruva and Chitta have certainly given back. Chitta indicated that during its 2025 fiscal year in their home states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India, FCN:
Helped 95 children born with cleft lip and cleft palate with free, life-changing surgeries
Distributed 15,650 blankets
Provided notebooks and school bags to 10,000 students
Distributed new clothing to 19,150 needy elderly and students
Gave new sewing machines to 100 women from the villages to make clothing for the poor
Facilitated scholarships for 1,500 children and college students
Provided financial assistance for 200 elderly
Helped 105 people suffering with Muscular Dystrophy buy nutritious food and medicine
Continued construction of two village chapels or community centers
FCN also secures medical care and provides health education and women’s development programs. Yeruva herself helps some patients, and she is proud to teach teenage girls about hygiene.
FCN Home: A ‘dream project’
FCN’s charitable services are many, but the “dream project” is its FCN Home for the physically disabled and elderly. With 12 buildings on six acres near Shadnagar village, the home serves as a hub not just for room and board, but for activities and various distributions to the needy.
Chitta said the FCN Home houses 50 full-time, elderly and disabled people — free of charge — providing food and support.
“This home is mainly for the poorest of poor and the destitute,” Chitta said. “We want our elderly people to have a dignified life. We want our poor people to live in peace in their senior age,” Chitta said.
FCN Home’s residents are Catholics, Muslims and Hindus, Chitta said. Catholics make up only about 1.5% of India’s population.
Chitta and Yeruva spend about seven months of the year at FCN Home, assisted by three or four sisters from the Servants of the Poor, a local community of nuns. A priest comes to say Mass three times a week, Chitta said.
Sponsoring Those with Muscular Dystrophy
FCN’s support for those with Muscular Dystrophy (MD) — a genetic disease that has a higher incidence in the area because of familial marriage and illiteracy — is another cause that is “dear to our hearts,” Yeruva said.
She explained that a retired teacher asked her for help with two MD sufferers, and she was so moved that she wanted to do more.
“We interviewed 10 children,” Yeruva said. “We asked them, ‘What help do you want from us?’ All they said was, ‘We have nothing to eat — help us with some groceries.’ That broke our hearts.”
So, 12 years ago, FCN began a sponsorship program for people suffering with MD, providing medicine as well as physical and social nourishment for 105 people, she said.
Yeruva said FCN has also gotten support from businesses in the nearest large city, Hyderabad.
‘So happy to see the children smile’
Like MD, cleft lip and cleft palate are widespread in the region, due to malnourishment and familial marriages, Chitta said. But FCN is stepping in early with transformative surgeries to fix these deformities. In collaboration with FCN, physicians from Hyderabad spend one day a month — pro bono — performing 15 to 20 surgeries, Yeruva said.
“Our goal is to help children who have no help coming from rural areas. … We are so happy to see the children smile,” she said.
Helping students ‘come up in life’
Education — and paying forward that education for the good of others — is very important to Chitta and Yeruva, and FCN is sponsoring 1,500 disadvantaged students in 17 locations.
Yeruva said some of these students have become nurses, a medic, a small number of physicians and a few engineers.
“We want them to come up in life,” she said, with the hope that they will in turn help their local communities, their families and FCN.
“Our dream and our vision are that we want them to help someone in need,” Yeruva said.
Chitta said some grateful students have kept that promise.
“There are a few students who have gotten jobs and have become sponsors,” he said, helping with distributions and other events.
Inspiring Others
Others in the community also lend a hand — a fact Chitta attributes to FCN’s visibility and respect in the area. He said 165 people brought food to the home last year, and others who have heard about FCN Home visit for educational tours.
“The visitors are inspired by our lives,” he said. “They’re inspired by the works of FCN. We want to leave a legacy that all can do some good, too.”
In hopes of inspiring Coloradans, Chitta and Yeruva will be onsite July 4 and July 5 at Most Precious Blood Parish in Denver and St. Mark Parish in Westminster.
“We tell [parishioners], God has blessed you, and God has blessed this country tremendously, and the missions keep going forward because of the generosity of so many in this country,” he said, adding that most of FCN’s funding comes from the United States.
Chitta said donations from this year’s appeal will go toward cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries, care for the elderly and physically challenged, and distribution of clothing, blankets and school supplies.
The appeal is coordinated through the Archdiocese of Denver’s Missionary Cooperative Program (MCP), said Pastoral Outreach Operations Manager Robbyn Celestin. MCP invites Catholic organizations around the world to visit parishes to share their experiences and ask for financial support and prayers, she said. The appeals are approved annually in cooperation with the national office of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith.
Celestin said FCN participated in the MCP in 2023 and raised thousands at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Arvada and St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Denver.
Blessed to Serve the Poor
Chitta and Yeruva acknowledge that their work can take a physical and emotional toll, but both said they feel blessed to do it.
“We work seven days a week, 80 hours a week. And it’s just because we are very passionate about helping the needy in India,” Chitta said. “Unless we have the spiritual power and the trust in God, we would never be able to do this work.”
Yeruva echoed the sentiments of her husband and that sign on the wall: “If not for faith, I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing. As a physician, I worked in very rural areas with nothing. So every moment was a challenge. But … God took care of it, and we totally believe that God provides, and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to serve the poor.”
For more information, visit www.fcn-usa.org.
