When two Americans, Nicholas Avirett and Echo June Vincent found Adia, an emaciated baby on the pavements of Hyderabad last month, they did not look the other way. “Her grandmother was asking for change, begging. Adia was on the verge of death. We went to the police, but they thought we were being annoyed by the begging. They didn’t understand,” they say.

Echo June and her husband, who are freelance artists, with some difficulty, convinced the child’s parents to let them take her to the hospital. There, the doctors told them that the child who looked two-three months old was actually 14 months old and was severely malnourished.

Echo then posted her thoughts on finding Adia on her blog (www.pop-india.blogspot.com). What followed was support from all over the world. Echo and Nicholas have been networking Etsy.com, a US based website where members from over 150 countries can buy and sell handmade goods. When Echo, a seller on the website, posted about Adia, the support for the child was overwhelming.

Athena Corcoran-Tadd, an Irish music student who is currently living in Portugal and is a buyer on Etsy says, “Echo, aka “nutmeg’ on the website, is a frequent contributor. When she first encountered Adia she wrote about as one would, to share her experience in a supportive community. She wrote about the emotional impact seeing this starving child had on her. She posted regular updates on Adia, and soon had many of us in the community following and doing what we could to support and help.”

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