After the runaway success of their film, “Slumdog” director Danny Boyle and

After the runaway success of their film, “Slumdog” director Danny Boyle and producer Christian Colson set up the Jai Ho trust to ensure the children receive proper homes, a decent education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They have also donated $747,500 to a charity to help slum children in Mumbai.

The filmmakers have agreed to raise the amount of money they will spend on new apartments for each family from $30,000 to $50,000, a Jai Ho trustee and Rubina’s father, Rafiq Qureshi, both told The Associated Press on Saturday.

In addition, the filmmakers have agreed to give each family a stipend of $130 a month and a lump sum of $3,000 a year to support the children while they are in school, the trustee and Qureshi said.

That is substantially more than any of their neighbors in Garib Nagar make, where many bring home $4 a day as auto rickshaw drivers and maids.

“We are trying our best to finalize things as soon as possible,” Jai Ho trustee Nirja Mattoo said Saturday. She said representatives of the trust took Azhar’s family to look at a few nearby apartments earlier this week.

Slum demolitions are common in India’s cramped cities, and government promises to resettle slum-dwellers often come to nothing. Even when slum-dwellers are given housing, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities, far from jobs.

Danny Boyle seems to have set up the children, let’s hope he put the money in the right hands.

Source AP