"I really thought it was God talking to me," said Gellatly, who says he is not a religious man.

Since that fateful sighting 12 years ago, Gellatly, 51, president of Network Media, has donated several hundred thousand dollars of his own money to the Childwatch-India foundation he set up to provide housing, healthcare and educational and employment opportunities to 50 families in Yamuna Basti — "a place of fabulous joy and endless misery," he said.

"It's worth it. With the exchange rate at 45 rupees to the dollar, dollars are a very powerful tool over there. I'm able to use my earning power here to magnify the good that I can do."

Network Media operates O'ahu Visitors Bureau Television and Convention Television, available in thousands of hotel rooms, and provides cable TV service for several hotel chains. The company also publishes the Best of O'ahu visitors guide and in-room hotel magazines and directories.

Business acquaintance Jim Romig and his wife, Puchi, saw firsthand Childwatch-India's good works while visiting the country for a business executives conference three years ago. Jim Romig is chairman of the Hilo Hattie clothing and retail chain.

"It's hard to describe the type of poverty that was there," said Puchi Romig. "I can't believe what he's doing for them. He doesn't do it for his own benefit or ego — not at all."

Jim Romig was so impressed that he arranged a tour for other executives at the conference, who ended up donating several thousand dollars.

"You have to see it to believe it. He's making a huge difference in some of these people's lives, even saving them in terms of the medical attention they might need and allowing kids a way to get out of the slum," Romig said.

Gellatly said that when he first visited India in 1984, it was love at first sight.

"An hour after I stepped off the plane in Bombay, I wrote in my journal: 'Somehow I am home.' I can't explain it precisely. It isn't only the way it looks and sounds and smells and tastes — it's everything."

He would return in successive years, and in 1990 while taking photographs of the ancient Jama Masjid mosque in New Delhi, two girls aged 8 and 10 approached and offered him tea. They led him down a footpath to a patch of bare ground where the girls' family was living under a tarp tied to the mosque's wrought-iron fence.

He befriended the family and visited them on a return trip the following year. He said he was distressed to learn that an infant son whose picture he had taken on his previous visit had died.

"I wasn't really able to digest that; it kind of sunk in and stuck there," he said.

During that same trip is when Gellatly spotted the sign on the gatepost. He didn't waste any time putting the message into action.

He acquired some land in the mostly Muslim area known as Yamuna Basti and bought lumber and reed mats to build huts for nine families.

The following year, 11 more homes were built and Gellatly loaned out money to start 15 small businesses ranging from bicycle rickshaws and vegetable carts to street sales of dry goods.

In 1997, Gellatly formally established Childwatch-India with Edward Daniel, a Punjabi social worker who had been involved with other aid agencies.

The foundation, which is registered in India but not in the United States, runs a childcare center, two preschools, a computer center and job-training programs, and provides immunizations and other healthcare services. It also operates separate homes for boys and girls from the slum, providing shelter, food, clothing and tutoring while they attend local schools.

Gellatly said he was not particularly active in charity work before Childwatch-India, but can't imagine life without it.

"It seems natural. If I didn't do this it would be unnatural," he said.

He keeps his involvement in the foundation low key and doesn't actively solicit donations. He remains Childwatch-India's largest donor by far.

"I realized that I had been given power, that my business had vested me with the power to do good. It's the most wonderful use of time and money and energy that I could imagine," he said.