For more about key actors in the City of Joy Aid organization, see:

• Portraits of Generosity

• Articles & Commentary

	Mother Teresa lent support, advice and inspiration to Dominique Lapierre's humanitarian endeavors in the slums of Calcutta. (Note: City of Joy Aid is a separate organization from Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.)

In the wake of the success of Freedom at Midnight, the book that recounts the Indian struggle for Independence, Lapierre knew he had to give something back to the nation with which he had fallen in love. Equipped with a check for $50,000 of royalty earnings, Lapierre and his wife, also named Dominique, paid a visit to Mother Teresa, certain she would know how best to put their donation to use.

It was a meeting that would forever change their lives. Watching the Saint of Calcutta pursue her mission of mercy, Lapierre realized that "conditions could be changed, that poverty was not a fatality, that compassion could restore hope, that a little bit of love could do marvels."

Mother Teresa introduced him to Englishman James Stevens who had opened a home for children suffering from leprosy from the slums of Calcutta. In the course of fifteen years, he had rescued, cured and educated several thousand children. When Stevens met Lapierre in 1981, he was in deep financial crisis: the home had exhausted his own personal funds, and had no other source of support. It seemed as if he would be forced to return 150 children to their hovels in the slums. Lapierre pledged that such a tragedy would not come to pass, that the refuge that Stevens had named "Udayan"--"Resurrection"--would never close its doors.

The Lapierres with the children of the Resurrection Home, which rescues, cures, and educates underprivileged children from the slums of Calcutta. In a nation where 350 million people will never sit down to so full a plate, meal time is sacred.

Since that day, Lapierre's promise has only increased in scope. In 1984, in tribute to the inhabitants of the slum that was fast becoming his second home, Lapierre wrote The City of Joy, which became an international bestseller. His commitment has deepened, his projects expanded.

Since 1981, the Lapierres have supported the work of 1000 social workers, doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and educators. They have contributed to the rescue, shelter, treatment, cure, education, and rehabilitation of over 4 million patients suffering from tuberculosis, cholera, leprosy, and the other diseases that exist in the shadow of poverty. The Resurrection Home for children suffering from leprosy has cured nine thousand children infected by this devastating but treatable disease.

	The three hospital boats launched by the Lapierres to bring medical aid to fifty-four islands of the Ganges Delta all but forgotten by the world.

In 1997, 1998, and 1999, the Lapierres launched three hospital boats to bring medical aid to the tiny islands that dot the Ganges Delta. Although they are home to over one million people, these 54 islands have no other source of medical care: they have been so forgotten that world maps do not record their existence.

In three years, the medical teams working on these boats have treated 100,000 people for tuberculosis, and performed 3,000 operations in the confines of a floating operating room.

	Author and philanthropist Dominique Lapierre being honored by former TB patients treated and cured at the SHIS medical center in Banghur, which is supported by the royalties of the books The City of Joy and A Thousand Suns.

In addition, the Lapierres' initiatives have dug over 500 tube wells for drinking water and taught the women of a thousand villages to read and write.