In honor of Daniel Brewer and his incredible life, his family invites you to support to The Daniel Brewer Legacy Fund, The Gift of Sight, for Aurokiya Eye Care Center in Auroville, India.

On Tuesday December 27, 2022, Wednesday December 28 in Auroville, India, an online gathering with Daniel’s family and friends. celebrated Daniel’s life and the legacy fund for Aurokiya Eye Center.

You can receive a link for Daniels Memorial by filling out the form below. Scroll down to read more about Daniel.

Donate to the Daniel Brewer Legacy Fund for Aurokiya Eye Center

Daniel Brewer was one of Auroville’s early pathfinders with a lifelong love of India. Daniel landed in Auroville in 1969. He developed the Kottakarai community of Auroville inspired by the simple beauty of Kottakarai villagers’ lives.

As many people know, Daniel lost his vision in the last years of his life due to a rare bacterial infection after a routine cataract surgery. For this reason, we chose Aurokiya, which will provide the gift of sight in his beloved Auroville and surrounding villages, as a living legacy that will last for generations. 

Aurokiya Eye Care Center’s mission is the prevention of blindness in the Auroville bio-region, with a particular focus eye care and eye screening camps for the villagers, such as those among whom Daniel lived.

From Daniel’s daughter, Hiranya:

“One of Daniel’s most enduring and beloved qualities was the special attention that he offered all of us. This love that he communicated through his eyes, through his hands, through his simple acts of generosity and gentleness was deeply appreciated by all who knew him. His legacy reaches out almost unseen, like the roots of a tree, spreading out in all directions, spreading nourishment and joy to all those whose lives he touched.”

It would have made Daniel so very happy to know that the suffering he endured and the love he inspired in all those around him would culminate in the beautiful opportunity to bring crucial quality eye care to so many, in the place he always thought of as his true home town.

Aurokiya Eye Care Center was founded in 2021 by Aurosugan, a third generation Tamil Aurovilian. Its mission is the prevention of blindness and eye health education for underserved communities in Auroville bio-region villages such as Kottakarai, Kuilapalayam, Edayanchavadi, and others. It is the only eye care center in Auroville bio-region. 

Aurokiya Eye Center is in a phase of rapid growth and expanding its capacity to serve. The most pressing goal is to increase screening capacity for the mobile eye camps that serve villages and schools.

Your generous donation towards acquiring Aurokiya’s own electric van will be a direct contribution to someone’s eyesight.

One of Aurokiya’s goals is to increase their ability to serve by expanding the reach of their mobile eye screening camps. The camps lead to direct referrals for emergency eye conditions that would otherwise go undiagnosed.

Aurokiya has acquired most of the equipment and tech necessary for mobile screening and realtime communication with Aravind Hospital. The one item that remains to be acquired is an electric van for housing the equipment and transport to the camps, to be available through the month and increase the number of the mobile eye camps that Aurokiya can hold.

Kottakarai was an early community in Auroville founded next to the village of that same name. In those early days, the community was dedicated to reforestation, agriculture and village relations.

Daniel’s words on the beginnings of Kottakarai:

“Before the move to Kottakarai, those of us living at Silence community were informed that we were living on the future site of the Indian Cultural Center, Bharat Nivas, and we would soon have to relocate. With an openheart, and a number of AV property maps, a small group of us set out to find a home for our community.

Since Auroville had many plans for the future, we realized that if we located near a village, we might not get moved again.

We wrote to the Mother asking for per- mission to live in or near a village, specifically Kottakarai. We felt that locating right next to the village was a good idea. This was an un- usual request, a unique request, coming from velekares (white people).

When the Mother did give us her bless- ing, as members of Auroville, she encouraged us to be humble. She said that villagers were innately more spiritual than us, and that we as Westerners shouldn’t think we knew more than them, and we shouldn’t be egotistical in our thoughts or activities, feeling proud that we were doing so much to ‘help’ the villagers. I remember feeling very moved by this.”