Chicago Chapter celebrated Makar Sankranti with Bhutanese Refugees. Around 100 Bhutanese and around 25 volunteers attended the utsav.
Program started with Deep Prajawalan and Bhajans. We had short speech about SEWA International, General speech about how to appear for interview and SNY announcement.
We distributed 10 lb of rice, 1 gallon of milk, a can of mango pulp, one OM picture, Agarbati pack, Hanuman Chalisa, a shawl. We also distributed Til-gud. Program ended with Shanti Mantra.
All four HSS chapters of Chicago started collecting warm-cloths for Bhutanese refugee after our initial connection with them on 12/20/08 Saturday. After having initial talk with all volunteers we decided date and time that was convenient to all Bhutanese refugees. 16 volunteers from all four shakhas, with 3 full van of warm-cloths reached place at 8:45 AM. We were welcome by host Dilli-ji Acharya (our point of contact for Bhutanese Refugees). All other families were invited by Dilli-ji at his apartment at 9 AM. We started with introduction. Then one of the Bhutanese brother sang one spiritual song. Then we started distribution cloths family by family. We distributed winter cloths to 40 families. Everybody were happy when they were leaving. Some of us had lunch at Dilli-ji's place. Few observations: Even though they were living in refugee camps for more than 17 years after kicked out from their own country they havent lost hope. They all has smile on their faces.
Some of Bhutanese refugees are highly educated (two people in Chicago have Masters in Sanskrit from Banaras.
Out of 40 Bhutanese Families in Chicago, only 10 families have job (atleast one family member) while 30 families doesnt not have any family member working. Some of them are not educated and have language problem. There are some elderly people among them
That was our first project and now we will be going for next phase of the project considering long term goals and considering our resources. Pictures for the event can be viewed at http://www.hssus.org/gallery/v/MWEST/Chicago+Bhutanese++Winter+Cloth+Distribution/
Thanks & Regards
Girish Pambhar
