\n<\/p>\n
In the city of Bhubaneswar, the capital of the north-east Indian state of Odisha, there is an eye clinic that has transformed the lives of thousands of children.<\/p>\n
Before the unit was established in 2008, according to its vice-chair, there was no dedicated children\u2019s eye care centre in the entire eastern part of India, a country home to 20% of the world\u2019s blind children. The clinic now sees about 3,000 children a month and performs 350 eye surgeries \u2013 a significant proportion of them at no cost to the often very poor families who need them.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Miriam Hyman.<\/span> Photograph: Rex Features<\/p>\n This is one of the legacies of Miriam Hyman, a 31-year-old picture researcher, amateur artist and keen dancer who was murdered in the London bombings of 7 July 2005, alongside 51 other commuters.<\/p>\n Miriam was \u201ca very visual person\u201d, says her older sister Esther, and after her death, her family were determined that good would come from the terrible act of violence that claimed her life. With their compensation money and public donations, they funded the equipment needed to set up the Miriam Hyman Children\u2019s Eye Care Centre in Bhubaneswar. Thanks to its work, among other achievements, doctors have made significant steps towards eliminating one form of childhood blindness, retinopathy of prematurity, in the surrounding area.<\/p>\n <\/span>Esther Hyman: \u2018We\u2019ve done everything we can \u2026 so there is a sense of satisfaction.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes our hearts happy to know that she\u2019s memorialised in that way,\u201d says Esther Hyman. \u201cThe centre is Miriam\u2019s living memorial. It\u2019s a place that benefits people, and that\u2019s very much the kind of person that Miriam was.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty years after the attacks, the families of those who died are preparing to gather on Monday to mourn and remember those killed in the four suicide bombings on 7\/7, three on London Underground trains and the fourth on a doubledecker bus.<\/p>\n <\/span>Fiona Stevenson.<\/span> Photograph: Stevenson family<\/p>\n Alongside their profound sadness, however, many family members will also be able to point to acts of great positivity and hopefulness, large and small, that followed their loved ones\u2019 deaths.<\/p>\n Among these little rays of light, scattered around the world, is a project in Belize that has taught thousands of children to swim. It was set up after 7\/7 by the family of Fiona Stevenson, a solicitor originally from Cheshire who was killed in the explosion at Aldgate.<\/p>\n Described by her family as a whirlwind of positivity and enthusiasm who loved to travel, Stevenson had recently returned from a working trip to the Central American country, where she had proudly gained her diving qualifications, but had also learned that many children in the country died by drowning because few had the chance to learn to swim.<\/p>\n The charity was set up \u201cto try and find some positivity out of such a horrendous time for us\u201d, says her sister Andrea Watson. \u201cIt gave us something to focus on, and we remembered how much Fiona loved Belize when she was there working. Although the break in our hearts will never be mended, it brought some comfort that those that gained a skill for life were gaining it in her name.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The scheme has also trained hundreds of young adults as lifeguards and swim instructors. By the side of a swimming pool in Belize City is a plaque and photo explaining more about the life of the woman whose quiet legacy may have been to prevent countless child deaths.<\/p>\n On the other side of the world, meanwhile, a fund set up in memory of Michael Matsushita, who died at Russell Square, distributed funds between five children\u2019s orphanages in Cambodia and Vietnam. Matsushita, a New Yorker, was born in Vietnam and had recently moved to London to join his girlfriend, who, like him, worked as a tour guide for the firm Intrepid Travel.<\/p>\n Other memorial projects are closer to home. On the day of the attacks, Great Ormond Street children\u2019s hospital treated adult casualties for the first time since the second world war; only later did those at the hospital learn that two of their own staff \u2013 Behnaz Mozakka, a biomedical officer, and Mala Trivadi, a radiographer \u2013 were among the dead. They are now remembered in a garden at the hospital where staff can find refuge from their busy shifts and long-term patients experience fresh air and tranquility.<\/p>\n A substantial donation from the family and employers of Helen Jones, an accountant originally from Lockerbie, helped fund the opening of a children\u2019s unit at the Eden Valley hospice in Cumbria, which has since supported the families of many hundreds of sick babies and children. In memory of Benedetta Ciaccia, an Italian-born business analyst who worked in publishing, Birkbeck, University of London awards annual bursaries to students studying IT, the course from which Ciaccia had recently graduated.<\/p>\n <\/span>Benedetta Ciacci.<\/span> Photograph: PA<\/p>\n For all the manifest good these memorial projects do, they have not come without cost for family members who have been dealing with intensely personal losses. The first decade after Miriam\u2019s death was \u201cvery effortful\u201d, says Esther Hyman, in establishing both the eye clinic and an educational resource, called Miriam\u2019s Vision, to help teachers explore issues of reconciliation.<\/p>\n \u201cI now realise that in the first 10 years, I wasn\u2019t dealing with my emotions, I was suppressing my grief by channelling it into constructive efforts,\u201d she says. After that milestone, she felt burnt out and had to step back for a while, spending several years overseas. \u201cI couldn\u2019t live the rest of my life in light of my sister\u2019s death. I had to find other channels, other ways of being that didn\u2019t concern Mim\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n With the government reviewing the national curriculum, Esther and her mother, Mavis, are focused on campaigning to have the topic of social cohesion explicitly included. \u201cIt\u2019s a pity that it falls to those who\u2019ve been affected by a lack of social cohesion to speak up for social cohesion, but I think it\u2019s understandable. We don\u2019t want anybody else to go through what we\u2019ve been through,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Once that review ends, and with the clinic well established, they may reluctantly conclude that it is time to wind down the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust \u201cwith regret, and maybe with some relief\u201d, says Esther. \u201cWe\u2019ve done everything we can within our arms\u2019 reach. So there is a sense of satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Other schemes continue, however. The family and employers of Philip Russell, 28, a financial manager who died in the bus bombing, funded a travel bursary in his memory at Kingston University, intended to enable students to make a difference in projects overseas.<\/p>\n <\/span>Gabriel Oyewole at a project for young footballers in Ghana after receiving a travel bursary in memory of Philip Russell.<\/span> Photograph: Gabriel Oyewole<\/p>\n Gabriel Oyewole recently used a bursary to travel to Ghana where he worked as a mentor to students and developed his skills as a physiotherapist. The Russell family, he says, \u201ccould have put the money into anything they wanted to, probably easier ventures, but they chose to help students that needed help, career-wise and personally. They probably changed, not just mine, but probably a lot of people\u2019s careers and personal life in doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip\u2019s father, Grahame, who, with Philip\u2019s mother, Veronica, sat on the committee that awarded the grants, died recently. \u201cHe was very proud to serve on that board for 20 years,\u201d says Philip\u2019s sister Caroline Steadman. She will now take his place on the panel, continuing to support young people who are looking forward excitedly to their futures, just as her brother was two decades ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the city of Bhubaneswar, the capital of the north-east Indian state of Odisha, there is an eye clinic that has transformed the lives of thousands of children. Before the unit was established in 2008, according to its vice-chair, there was no dedicated children\u2019s eye care centre in the entire eastern part of India, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1839,2931,2930,2932,2934,649,1661,588,2929,2933],"class_list":{"0":"post-10122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-attacks","9":"tag-clinics","10":"tag-eye","11":"tag-families","12":"tag-heartbreak","13":"tag-july","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-schools","16":"tag-swim","17":"tag-victims"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}