Travelling through India by train in late 2015, AG founder Dick Smith passed a homeless family living under a bridge, including a young girl wearing nothing but a pink bracelet. As the train passed by, Dick took a quick photo on his smartphone and noted down the GPS position.

Back in Australia, he asked photographers and adventurers Chris and Jess Bray to return to India and find the girl and her family and help them into accommodation, secure the girl an education and open a bank account for Dick deposit funds into – all in three days… 

“I just wanted them to go and see if they could help the family because they seemed so desperate,” said Dick. “In fact I thought at least they owned a goat but now I’ve found out they owned absolutely nothing, not even a goat, not even a place to live.”

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This was the distant photo snapped outside a train window – all Chris and Jess had to go by.

“To make it worse, the girl and all the main people in the photo are looking the other way – we couldn’t even see anyone’s face,” says Chris. “In a country of 1.25 billion people, and no way of knowing if they’d still be there or not, trying to find let alone attempt to help this family was going to be quite the adventure.”

Chris Bray, who was named Australian Geographic’s Young Adventurer of the Year in 2004, had only recently returned from running a photo safari in the Galapagos with his wife and business partner Jess. Now, the pair found themselves jetsetting off again to Vadodara (formerly Baroda), the third largest city in the Western Indian State of Gujarat, with nothing but a photograph and the location of a bridge.

“I’d emailed our hotel ahead and the receptionist, Jayati, was keen to try and help us, acting as our Hindi/English translator,” says Chris who is pictured here having made it to the bridge, underneath which Dick Smith had originally spotted the homeless family just weeks earlier. 

“Jayati suggested before we try to find the family, we should first buy some gifts to make our good intentions clear,” says Chris. “But by the time we’d made it to the markets and back, it was getting dark. She kept trying to just give the gifts to random families on the street. She couldn’t comprehend why we needed to find this particular family.”

Chris and Jess visited the bridge alone the next day, but couldn’t recognise any of the faces from the photo and were hindered by the language barrier.

Through a friend of a friend, they were able to enlist a local university professor, Dr Chellani, as translator and returned with him to the bridge with Dick Smith’s original photograph.

Success! Chris and Jess found the family, including the girl with the pink bracelet. Her name is Divya, meaning ‘divine light’, and she is eight years old.

“With all eyes on her, and these two weird forigners and men in suits here to see her, Divya thought she must have been in trouble, and was initially very shy and a little upset,” says Chris.

Through Dr Chellani, Chris and Jess were able to explain the situation and why they were there. “Everyone warmed up then, and we met the whole family,” says Chris. “Divya has two brothers, aged seven and two years old.”

Divya’s parents had been living under the bridge for 12 years, and Divya was born there. At that time, the father of the family was away at work as a plasterer, where he earns less than $6/day – not enough to afford even a slum house. They arranged to meet the family at the bank with their father that same afternoon to discuss how they might help.

On the afternoon of day two of Chris and Jess’s mission to India, the entire family – including the father who had now returned from work – filed into the bank manager’s office. “They seem like the perfect family, not only in need of some assistance, but able and willing to be helped,” says Chris.

“It was a pretty special to be  the messengers of such a generous, life-changing gift, and watching realisation dawn on this family that we wanted to pay rent for them to move into a house, help Divya get a good education, help the father earn a better wage to help them start to help themselves,” says Chris. 

A bank account was opened for Divya with her mother as guardian (both pictured) – but first, Chris and Jess had to help arrange for passport photos for Divya and her mother who lacked any form of ID.

On Dr Chellani’s suggestion, a formal contract was also linked to the account, specifying that funds are only allowed to be used for rent and furthering Divya’s education. The contract was also written up “to give [the family] confidence that this was to be ongoing,” says Chris – the contract guaranteed a minimum of two years of an agreed level of funding, with a plan for more than 10 years’ support.

With all of the paperwork sorted, an initial amount of three months rent equivalent was deposited into the family’s new bank account.

“And then Jess and I took the family shopping! Somehow we all fitted into the back of one tiny rickshaw,” Chris says.

Unable to speak Hindi, and no longer accompanied by a translator, Chris and Jess had screenshots of some key items to purchase – in particular school items for Divya and tools for her father’s work, along with some other items for the family. “We really had to force the mum to allow us to buy clothes and shoes for her too,” says Chris.

Tools for the father’s work in plastering were high on the shopping list, as this would enable him to increase his wage. “He selected just a spirit level to start with, but when pressured enough, he added a bucket, a plumb-bob, a trawl, a measuring tape and a few other things. He was pretty chuffed,” says Chris.

Again on Dr Chellani’s suggestion, Chris and Jess met with a journalist from the Times of India “to give this more credibility for the family to truly believe this was happening, and to hopefully inspire others into similar acts of generosity,” says Chris. The newspaper – the world’s largest selling Ensligh paper – published this story on 19 December. 

Picturerd L to R: Dr Chellani; Jess Bray; Divya’s father; Divya; Divya’s mother; Chris Bray; bank manager Mr Rajwania.

Divya dressed up in her new outfit, holding a photo of Aussie philanthropist and AG founder Dick Smith and his wife Pip.

Divya’s school, to which Dick Smith has also pledged he will make a significant donation. Divya’s father is currently looking for accommodation within walking distance from the school and close to the family’s existing community.

Mission complete! Chris and Jess on a rickshaw, returning to the airport after a whirlwind three days. 

“I’m amazed they managed to find the girl and that they’ve managed to do this,” says Dick Smith. “In the past I’ve tried to help people in developing countries, but we’ve never been able to get anywhere because it’s almost impossible to find the people or to find a way of assisting them, so it was extraordinary that they actually found the little girl who lived under the railway bridge, purely because she had a pink band on her right wrist.”

Chris originally chronicled this experience in a Facebook photo album called Mission impossible? Finding one girl in India’s 1.25 million!