Friends of New Hope India - Australia is supporting the work of the late Maggie 'Maggie Sister' McMullen OAM who spent 30 years working alongside New Hope India founder Eliazar T Rose caring for India's poorest and most vulnerable people. New Hope India was founded in 1985 by Eliazar T Rose, the son of two leprosy patients, who has dedicated his life to helping India's poorest and most vulnerable
people. Again in 2013 Eliazar and his wife Ruth were admitted into the “Hall of Fame” of the Civil Society India. Maggie McMullen was an inspirational woman who devoted more than 30 years to helping the sick and poor in India. Maggie Sister is a founder Trustee and Patron of “Friends of Australia and a Trustee of New Hope Trust India”. She lived and worked from idyllic Broome, Western Australia, but her life’s work took her far from that setting. The grandmother of three was known as 'Maggie Sister', a name given to her by the people with whom she worked in the Indian regions of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Maggie Sister’s involvement with the New Hope Rural Leprosy Trust began when she answered a lifelong call to travel to the country that had held so much mystery for her since childhood. Maggie Sister was awed by the commitment and the work being done in isolated tribal areas by the New Hope Trust and their determination to train local Tribal people for fieldwork. In recognition of the tireless work with the New Hope Rural Leprosy Trust she was awarded the Order of Australia in 2000, a Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship in 1996, and Citizen of the Year award in 1999. She passed away in 2019 after battling lung cancer for the second time.
