City of Joy Foundation and Other Humanitarian Causes
The City of Joy is about the unsung heroes of the Pilkhana slum in Kolkata. Lapierre donated half the royalties he earned from this book to support several humanitarian projects in Kolkata, including refuge centers for leper and polio children, dispensaries, schools, rehabilitation workshops, education programs, sanitary actions, and hospital boats. To process and channel the charitable funds he founded an association called "Action aid for Calcutta lepers' children" (registered in France under the official name of Action pour les enfants des lépreux de Calcutta). Aware of the corruption in India, he organizes all his fund transfers to India in such a way as to ensure that the money reaches the right person for the right purpose. His wife since 1980, Dominique Conchon-Lapierre is his partner in the City of Joy Foundation.
The royalties from Five Past Midnight in Bhopal go to the Sambhavna clinic in Bhopal which provides free medical treatment to the victims of the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal disaster. Lapierre also funds a primary school in Oriya Basti, one of the settlements described in Five Past Midnight in Bhopal.
Read more about this topic: Dominique Lapierre
Famous quotes containing the words city of, city, joy, foundation and/or humanitarian:
“The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents.... It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Blind Beggar: How do you know so much about city ordinances?
Inspector Clouseau: What sort of stupid question is that? Are you blind?
Blind Beggar: Yes.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)
“An attitude of philosophic doubt, of suspended judgment, is repugnant to the natural man. Belief is an independent joy to him.”
—William Minto (1845–1893)
“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (20th century)
“We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)