HE helped set up the groundbreaking York Eco-Centre at St Nicholas Fields – now Gordon Campbell-Thomas and a York charity are creating India’s first such centre.

Mr Campbell-Thomas will tell members of the John Lally International Foundation at its annual meeting tonight that, after seven years of planning, the dream of creating the first sustainable community centre in Kolkata (Calcutta) is about to become reality.

He told The Press the project would deliver health, education and employment initiatives, using a building with photo-voltaic panels to generate electricity, composting toilets and rainwater harvesting.

“But most of all it will demonstrate that poor people in India can do things for themselves, albeit with a little help,” he said.

The foundation was set up in 2003 in memory of a York environmentalist, John Lally, who died in 1995.

Mr Campbell-Thomas, the chairman, said in 2007, it received a donation of £10,000 from Jeremy Piercy, of Shared Earth (York) and the following year, a Bengali woman, Gitanjali Sarkar, donated 2,000 square metres of land.

He said: “The foundation has recently made a bid for funding to the Department of International Development.

“However, the calling of the General Election in the UK postponed the result of the bid.

“The timing of the project is dependent on the coming of the monsoon, which is expected in six weeks’ time, and work on the foundations has to be completed before it starts.” He said an anonymous donor had come forward with an offer of £10,000 to bridge a funding gap.

Mr Campbell-Thomas said: “The project will provide work for poor people in producing handicrafts, and there will be a first aid centre and 20 laptops for teaching computing to young people, along with English language lessons. The project when completed will act as a “model”, as the York Eco Centre did. The work will demonstrate poor people in India can lift themselves up out of poverty, albeit with a little help from the John Lally International Foundation.”

• The foundation’s annual general meeting will be held at 7.30pm at the Black Swan pub in Peasholme Green. Anyone interested in attending is welcome.