A Family's Loss, Turned Outward — about Kiran Foundation, Noida

Kiran Foundation began in a family, not an office. There was no strategy document and no funding round. There were three people, three long illnesses, and a set of lessons nobody chooses to learn.

Our mother, and the reason for the name

Our mother, Kiran Singh, lived among people rather than apart from them. Her days were full of other people's business, and she preferred it that way. Women in trouble came to her, often women with nowhere else to go, because they knew two things: that she would listen, and that she would not send them away.

None of it was organised. She had no programme and no budget. She had a house people felt able to walk into. Kiran means a ray of light, and that is what she was to the people who found their way to her.

We could not change how our family's story ended. We can make sure other families have what they need to keep going.

What our father taught us about cost

Our father, Balkrishna Singh, was a veterinary doctor. He spent his working life looking after animals, most of them belonging to people who could not have afforded to lose one, which is its own quiet kind of public health.

He also lived with heart disease. What we learned from those years is that a heart condition bills a household long before it threatens a life. There are the tests. There are tablets that never stop. There is the calculation, made quietly and often, about whether this month's check-up can wait until next month.

Families with money make that calculation once and then act. Families without it make it every time, and eventually they are making it in an emergency ward, when the choices have already narrowed.

What our brother taught us about time

Our brother, Dharmendra Singh, was diabetic from birth. He grew up with an illness most people meet late in life, and he was matter-of-fact about it in a way that took the rest of us years to manage.

When his kidneys failed, dialysis became the shape of his week: twice a week, for years, with everything else arranged around it. Dialysis is not a treatment you finish. It is a standing appointment with no end date, and it takes the medicines, the tests and the journey to the centre along with it. We watched what that costs a household, and we watched other families in the same waiting room quietly run out of the means to continue.

So this is what we do

We work in the areas we know first hand. Not because they are the largest problems in India, but because we understand exactly where the money goes, exactly what a family is dealing with, and exactly which unpaid bill is the one that stops treatment.

• Kidney care and dialysis support, so nobody stops treatment because a session is unaffordable.
• Gau Seva, our father's life's work: treatment and fodder for cows nobody else will pay for.
• Dignity for women and elderly parents, carrying on our mother's work.

Around those three we support the everyday needs that keep a household standing while it copes: school fees and books, ration kits and meals, blankets in the cold months, and emergency help when something sudden goes wrong. Illness is never the only burden a family is carrying.

How we try to work

Support that continues. A one-time gift is a good day. A standing commitment is a treatment plan. Wherever we can, we fund the recurring cost rather than the one-off.

Paid to the provider, not the patient. Where the need is a dialysis session, medicines or a test, we pay the hospital, the chemist or the dialysis centre directly. It removes an awkward conversation and it removes any doubt about where the money went.

Accounted for. We are a young organisation and our numbers are still small. We would rather publish a small number accurately than a large one loosely.