‘The consultant said ‘I’m sorry, it’s now between you and God’ and that was so powerful to me’.

The founder of a fundraising charity helping the less privileged has spoken about the experience which inspired a special donation to two healthcare providers in Wolverhampton.

SDB Everyone Prosper founder Narinder Kaur was sat at her mother Balwant’s bedside in the intensive care unit at the city’s New Cross Hospital in 2019 as she battled Endocarditis.

Ms Kaur, an NHS nurse from Whitmore Reans, said she was feeling lost when she was told it was between her and God over her mother by a consultant.

She said: “Those words were so powerful to me and after that, I met a priest at the hospital called Ganesh Sharma Singh, who is one of the chaplains at the hospital.

“He came and said a prayer and, seeing that I was getting very tearful, asked me if I had an MP3 player which plays religious hymns, then suggested I listen to it after I said ‘yes’.

“That helped me so much over the next seven weeks and I developed a bond with it as it was something I was familiar and comfortable with.”

Ms Kaur has taken the experience she gained from that period to make a donation of 50 MP3 players with different religious texts and hymns to New Cross Hospital and Compton Care.

She was joined by Balwant and other members of the Whitmore Reans-based charity in making the donations at the venues, with social distancing measures followed throughout.

Blessed

The MP3 players are marked with the relevant religious symbol for what is on the player and will be available for use by patients and service users of the two facilities.

Ms Kaur said she had given some of the devices to New Cross as a thank you to how they had treated her mother and said Compton Care was chosen as they were very keen to take them.

She added: “I made a lot of enquiries around the hospital and they said it was something they wanted, while Compton Care were more than delighted to take on some of the devices. They’ll have access to the bible, the Quran and a lot of Hindi and Sikh passages, so it’s definitely tailored to everyone’s tastes.

“I feel really blessed to be able to help somebody in this way and give someone who might not have any family something familiar such as prayer.”

The MP3 players are one of a number of community campaigns SDB Everyone Prosper have run during the coronavirus pandemic.

It has opened up two food banks, sending out food parcels to vulnerable and elderly people, victims of domestic violence and anyone who needed help during the pandemic.

It has also operated a phone support service to help anyone feeling alone or vulnerable and worked to help ease social isolation.

This follows on from the community work it does in Punjab in India, where the charity runs a clean water project allowing anyone who needed it to get clean and fresh water.

By James Vukmirovic

Senior Reporter