The Vol­untary Health Ser­vices hos­pital in Chen­nai received sup­port from the Indian sub­sidi­ary of the AUMUND Group of com­pan­ies for the first time in 2021, as emer­gency aid dur­ing the Covid pan­demic, and dona­tions were later provided for the chil­dren’s ward. The hos­pital was foun­ded back in the late 1950s with the aim of provid­ing first-class spe­cial­ist health care for less for­tunate sec­tions of the pop­ula­tion. This is still the object­ive today, as con­firmed by the dir­ector of the hos­pital and his team dur­ing our visit in March 2023. The hos­pital’s mis­sion state­ment con­firms, “Our team at VHS are fully com­mit­ted to ful­filling the cri­teria of access­ibil­ity, afford­abil­ity and avail­abil­ity.”

The logical com­bin­ation of edu­cation and health pro­jects has always been at the core of our philo­sophy. This led to us devel­oping an idea together dur­ing our visit, and a schol­arship pro­gramme for trainee nurses was cre­ated. The young women all come from under­priv­ileged back­grounds, and this oppor­tun­ity to qual­ify in a first-class hos­pital opens doors to a new life for them and their fam­ilies.

We had the pleas­ure of meet­ing our first ten schol­arship recip­ients in per­son at a cel­ebrat­ory cere­mony at the VHS MACCON Nurs­ing Col­lege in Novem­ber 2024. Their life stor­ies deeply moved us, and so we decided to extend the fund­ing to all qual­ific­ations offered at the col­lege and to give more young women the oppor­tun­ity for high-qual­ity train­ing each year.