The story starts when Thomas van Berckel, a Dutchman, in August 2003 breaks the toenail of his big toe at Mahatma Gandhi Road in Bangalore. He goes to a small hospital and likes the nurse, Lalitha, who takes care of his toe. They stay in touch and six months later, in February 2004 they marry. Six months later, on 8 August, they founded Toe to Heart Trust Bangalore India. Again almost 6 months later, on Indian Republics day, 26 January 2005 their daughter was born. One year later also Support Organization in the Netherlands ‘Stichting Toe to Heart Nederland’ was founded.

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Now Toe to Heart has, with the help of many volunteers and donors, helped dozens of children to graduate up to PU2 levels. The idea has always been that we would help till children would be 18 and that they should explore opportunities themselves also.

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Thomas and Lalitha always have said that they would do this project till their own child would become 18 years old and also Toe to Heart would have that age. Now we have reached that stage. We don’t take any young children anymore and the last of the children in the present project is scheduled to graduate for PU2 in 2028.

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In between, we allow ourselves a gap year, as many 18 and 19-year-olds do open up to the world and explore what else we can do with our story. That’s why we have started this new website and see what comes on our path.