Children of Toe to Heart, distributing cakes at a ‘slum’, somewhere in Bangalore.

The development towards ‘Toe to Heart’. Thomas’ work for NGO’s between 1994 and 2004.

Thomas has a brother with an Intellectual disability and this has inspired him. After his studies in Maastricht, he went to Brussels and lived there in L’ Arche, a community of people with and without intellectual disabilities. Here he also learned his favourite language French and at that time his French was better than his English. He also was attracted by La Poudriѐre, a community with a huge diversity of people in close to Gare du Midi and stayed there twice. During his student time he also had gone to Israel to stay and work sometime in a Moshav. Community life with a diversity of people has always interested him. After his stay in Brussels, he went to Gouda in the Netherlands to help ‘building’ the new L’Arche community there. Here he also would be a responsible of the Work Shop and would help with fundraising.

Because he wanted to see how people with an intellectual disability were taken care of in a regular institution, he started working with a group of people with very challenging intellectual disabilities. There was a lack of resources and Thomas started to work as a fundraiser. First for Dennendal, later when they merged, for Reinaerde. In 2000 he started his first company ‘Fondswervingsbureau 0013’, to do fundraising work as a freelancer, which he changed into the idealistic company ‘Civil Society Development’ in 2001, to be more broadly involved in social projects and also took up writing assignments, see PUBLICATIONS. Part of his fundraising assignment was also to fundraise for projects of L’Arche in Burkina Faso, Brazil and India. He visited all these countries and in Bangalore, India he broke his toenail and married the nurse who took care of him. That’s how the ongoing Toe to Heart story started.

Toe to Heart

Toe to Heart has been an initiative since the start of his arrival in India, taken up with his wife Lalitha. It has been, till now, a tiny but in spirit big project about giving ‘material (the Toe) and immaterial (the Heart) aid to children in need. The project that exists since 2004 in Bangalore has been focusing on helping ‘children of mostly one parent children to get their school costs paid and get after school care and attention. In this way dozens of children have been helped and finished their studies up to 12th standard/PU2 In 2024 during the 20 year jubilee, we want to take the ‘human spirit’ of Toe to Heart further, also out of India. There is a website in Dutch www.toetoheart.org and in English www.toetoheartworld.com to keep you updated. You can also be part of the (4) Toe to Heart Support Group | Facebook