A CHARITY which is trying to create India’s equivalent to the York Eco Centre has won a £10,000 boost.

The John Lally International Foundation has received the donation from Shared Earth, an ethical Fair Trade chain of shops based in York.

Gordon Campbell-Thomas, of the York-based foundation, said the money would help create the first sustainable eco-community centre and farm in India.

He said after seven years of planning, a small road to the site in Kolkata had already been built and the foundations laid.

Further funding was being sought to complete the Gopal Nagar project, but he hoped to have it ready and working by January next year.

The project is intended to help Indians lift themselves out of poverty through health, education and employment initiatives, using a building with photo-voltaic panels to generate electricity, composting toilets and rainwater harvesting.

It will provide work for poor people in producing handicrafts, and there will be a first-aid centre and laptops for teaching computing to young people, along with English language lessons.

Mr Campbell-Thomas hopes it will be a model development for India, as the York Eco Centre in St Nicholas Fields is for Britain. About 2,000 square metres of land was donated for the project by a Bengali woman, Gitanjali Sarkar.

The foundation was set up in 2003 in memory of a York environmentalist, John Lally, who died in 1995.

Jeremy Piercy, of Shared Earth York, said he was delighted to help fund the project.

He said Shared Earth and the foundation worked in a similar vein, trying to help people in developing countries by supporting producers of handicrafts by paying a fair price for their work.

For more information about the foundation, go to jlif.org