May 25, 2000
Dear Friends,
This is the first newsletter to be published on the Web rather than being mailed directly to you. Hopefully you find this useful.
Since our last letter Paripurnata has indeed received approval of a long term land lease for a new facility. Fundraising for a building fund is in progress in India. Shadhika is monitoring progress and will try to help as required. We are continuing to support Paripurnata residents' counseling, and long term followup programs as to date.
During the past year we have been working with two organizations that we had contacted during our trip last January, helping them develop grant proposals along Shadhika's strategic interests. We are pleased to report that we are helping them launch two very exciting projects.
1. Punjabi Hospital in Varanasi. Dr. Arora, Director of a rural district hospital serving a population of some 300,000 villagers around Varanasi in the heart of India, proposes to launch a two-year campaign addressing two of the major challenges facing India today: high infant mortality and morbidity, and an extremely high rate of population growth. Punjabi Hospital will send out a team to visit each village in the district and will hold town meetings there. They will organize pregnant women in the community to come for a 3 to 4-day "camp" at the hospital, where they will be fed and attend talks, demonstrations, and classes on nutrition, self care, and well baby care, as well as seminars on birth control methods, and presentations on the need for birth control. Camps will be held every two weeks for two years -- this will cover the district. From each team one or two promising young women will be selected for further training. These women will serve as liaisons from the village to the Hospital, and as local resource persons to the camp attendees.
We feel this is a superb proposal, with excellent potential of making a significant difference in one of the most pressing public health problems of the subcontinent. We are funding the project for the first 9 months only with current funds available, hoping that we are able to approve a continuation with this year's funds raised.
2. Hope School in Durgapur. This is one of a very few special education institutions in India. Their student population consists of handicapped children and young adults with a wide variety of challenges -- sight, hearing, mobility, learning ability, etc. We worked with Mrs. Mukherjee, Director of the facility, helping her develop a proposal aiming at rendering a number of promising pupils self sufficient by providing a vocational training program for them. Shadhika will pay for training equipment and the salaries of vocational trainers, who will teach tailoring, spinning, and weaving skills to 16 to 20 young women.
Again, we feel that this project addresses an area of critical need: handicapped young people are too often kept at home and are not given a chance to become contributing members of society. We hope to make a small difference by helping a few young people distinguish themselves, and perhaps to create a model showing that it is possible for the handicapped to succeed.
Our annual fund raising event will take place at 3 to 6pm on Sunday, October 1 this year. We hope you will come. We will tell you more about these projects, as well as about Paripurnata's news. And perhaps as important, you can again count on luscious food and good company. We will again have a silent auction (by popular demand) of exciting and exotic prizes (a week in Southern France, a Tahoe weekend with dinner, a gourmet dinner for six to name a few), as well as a Raffle. All our members are getting personal invitations by regular mail. (If you would like to get an invitation, e-mail Juthica stangl@stanford.edu). Please send in your check in support of Shadhika by return mail. Our goal is to raise at least $15,000 this year, as opposed to $10,000+ last year, so we can continue supporting our new programs. In addition to your contribution check you can further help by buying raffle tickets and participating in the auction, and at the same time you have a chance to get great prizes!
We are looking forward to seeing you on Oct 1!
Juthica Stangl