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When:
July 28, 2021 all-day
America/New York Timezone
2021-07-28T00:00:00-04:00
2021-07-29T00:00:00-04:00
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Dear friends at St. Stephen’s:
I greatly appreciate all of you from St. Stephen’s who have been supporters of my foundation by helping the poor children of my village in India attend school. Thanks to your generosity we could provide basic needs for the education of 55 children and send 12 girls from around my village for nursing training. As Mother Teresa said rightly, “What makes a difference in the life of others is not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” These children stand as witnesses to the love and compassion you have put into their lives.
These same children, and the girls in nursing training, are still in need of your help. Their education is complicated by the fact that education is inaccessible now due to online classes. When we managed to get those generous parishioners from St Stephen’s to make education accessible to the poor children, the virus has made it inaccessible again by transferring the means of acquiring education from the classroom to the digital world which we cannot afford and we cannot provide. In the last academic year during the lockdown, 60 percent of the students in my state of Odisha in India could not access online classes because of poverty. As an example, my niece and several of her classmates would gather to use my brother’s mobile phone as the only means of accessing online education. [Note: accessibility to mobile phones is limited, the cost of which can be two months wages which, by the Wage Act are equivalent to $3.36/day for men, $2.69/day for women]
Given the inaccessibility to education due to the present situation, I would be very grateful to anyone in St. Stephen’s if, like last year, you could continue to help these children with a donation of $150 to meet the expenses of educating one child for one year. I would also be very grateful for whatever you could give for the nursing training of three more girls from another remote Catholic village whom we have decided to help.
I know all of you have been going through hard times due to coronavirus. As Mother Teresa said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” No matter how small, any little help is going to make a big difference in their life – we make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give. Thank you so much for your generosity!
To make a donation, checks payable to Jeesaya Nayak can be dropped off in the St. Stephen’s office. For questions, please call the office at 986-4028.
This year again I am still waiting for the lift of the international travel restrictions for non-citizens. I hope to come over there at least for one month if possible.
God bless you,
Fr Jeesaya Nayak, CM
More information on education in Odisha, India can be found at:
Information about daily wage system in India:
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