Andrea Thumshirn

From working with animals to teaching football to tribal girls, from making hospital patients laugh to empowering rural weavers, these foreigners are making a difference to our lives in India. Here’s a list of 12 such do-gooders from distant lands.

Andrea Thumshirn was a national level hockey player in Germany. She came to India in 2009 and since then has been training rural Rajasthan kids in hockey. She is also sponsoring their education and teaching them English. In fact, she took five of her students all the way to Germany to train!