He Dreamed of Leaving India.
God Sent Him Back.
Hand in Hand didn't start with a strategy, a board, or a budget. It started with one man who said yes to a voice most people would have ignored — and one little girl whose grandfather had nowhere else to turn.
Josh with the children of the village school in India.
The Beginning
Born in India. Built a Life in America. Called Back.
Josh Komanapalli was born in Amalapuram, a small town in India. Like many young Indians, he carried one dream above all others — to make it to America. To build a life far from the limitations he had grown up around.
He did. A career as a technology consultant for the United States Department of Defense. A home, a car, a stable American life. Everything he had once dreamed of from the other side of the world.
Then in early 2010, Josh took a vacation back to India — and heard God ask him to stay. Not visit. Not donate from a distance. Move back.
"When you have heard a voice that clearly, foolishness and faith look exactly the same."
He and his wife packed up their home, gathered their children, left the career, the security, the comfort — and followed. They arrived in India with faith and nothing else. No church sending them. No donors funding them. No safety net. Just a calling.
Where It All Began
We Didn't Start With a Program. We Started With a Grandfather.
Josh with Pallavi and her grandparents — where it all began.
He was too old to work and too poor to help, but he had walked a long way carrying one question: Is there anyone who will take care of my granddaughter?
Her name was Pallavi. Her parents had died of HIV. She was HIV-positive herself, and had nowhere to go.
Josh said yes. A home opened. Then fifteen more HIV-positive children — many of them orphaned by the same disease — came to live alongside her. They were fed, loved, educated, and given something most of them had never had: a future.
Pallavi later completed her bachelor's degree, moved to the city, found work, and built a life. She didn't just survive the cycle she was born into. She stepped out of it entirely.
14.5 Years of Showing Up
One Yes Became Thousands of Lives.
What started with one girl in a grandfather's arms grew into something Josh never planned. Each time a need appeared, he said yes again. That's still how Hand in Hand works — not through campaigns, but through presence.
What Makes Hand in Hand Different
Not a Program. A Presence.
Most nonprofits run programs. Hand in Hand moved in. For fourteen and a half years, Josh and his family lived in the communities they served — sharing meals, speaking the language, knowing people by name. That changes everything about how care gets given.
We stayed.
14.5 years on the ground in India — not flying in for a project, not funding from a distance. Josh and his family were neighbors to the people they served.
Always free.
Every service Hand in Hand provides — medical care, leprosy treatment, education, eye surgeries — is completely free. No sliding scale. No one turned away.
Faith, not formula.
Every decision is guided by one question: what does love require here? Not what's scalable, not what's fundable. What does this person in front of us actually need?
We serve the forgotten.
Leprosy patients. HIV-positive orphans. Tribal children with no school. We go where stigma keeps others away — because that's exactly where Christ went.
Our mission: To extend Christ's love by providing care, education, and dignity to those in need — empowering them to live with hope and purpose. Our vision: To break the cycle of poverty through Christian love that doesn't judge, and doesn't leave.
Built From Nothing
Two Hospitals. Two Schools. Churches. All Free.
Over fourteen years, the presence that began with one girl in a grandfather's arms quietly became infrastructure. Not through campaigns or capital drives — through showing up, day after day, until something permanent stood where there had been nothing.
Before
A remote tribal village — a thatched hut, dry earth, no school within reach.
Taking Shape
Walls rising from the ground — a promise becoming real, brick by brick.
Promise Kept
The whole village showed up on opening day. Balloons. Gifts. Joy.
2 Hospitals
Including a fully equipped ICU ward — built in communities where the nearest medical care was hours away.
2 Schools
Built in tribal and underserved villages where children had no access to education at all.
Churches & Community Halls
Places where people gather, belong, and find the love of Christ — not just services, but community.
None of this was planned from a boardroom. Each building is the physical answer to a need that showed up, and a community that said yes. Faithful presence, long enough, leaves things standing.
A Promise That Reached Africa
He Set Out to Serve One Country. God Added a Continent.
Before Josh ever left for India, God gave him a word from Isaiah:
"Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn."
Isaiah 60:3
Hand in Hand ministry reaching lives in Africa — the fruit of faithful obedience in India.
Standing in America preparing to serve one village, that promise seemed impossible. But over 14 years, people from 19 different nations found their way to Josh's church in India. When some returned home — to Eswatini in southern Africa — they carried the same faith and calling back with them.
The work in Eswatini wasn't planned. It wasn't a Hand in Hand expansion strategy. It is the fruit of one man's obedience in 2010 — proof that quiet faithfulness, done long enough, reaches further than any campaign ever could.
The Next Chapter
Called to Dallas. Same God. Bigger Mission.
Fourteen and a half years after stepping off a plane in India, God called Josh back — this time to Dallas, Texas. The assignment shifted: not to serve in the field, but to build the organization that would resource the field.
In August 2025, Josh, his wife Jessica, and their three daughters made the move. He had never lived in Dallas. He didn't choose it. The voice was clear, and by now Josh knew exactly what to do with a voice like that.
Now Headquartered In
Dallas, Texas
Closer to the donors who make the work possible. The field office continues in India. The heart of the mission hasn't moved an inch.
Then & Now
The Same Family. Fourteen Years Later.
Same faith. New city. The work continues — now from Dallas, and still for the forgotten.
The Komanapalli family today — Dallas, Texas, 2025.
Partner With Us
"I didn't come back to India knowing what to do. I just came knowing who sent me."
Every gift continues the work that began when one man walked away from a comfortable life and toward something harder and truer. Free care, leprosy treatment, education, eye surgeries — none of it happens without people like you saying yes.