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WHO WE ARE VISIT WEBSITE VISIT WEBSITEKeep in Touch Recent Posts Kalahandi district of Orissa The Joy of Giving Discovering Rikuzentakata Earth Day 2011 Let’s Finish It All: Shoulder to Shoulder in Japan Four Days in Ishinomaki—Relief and Reflections from Japan Volunteers Distribute Food and Water in Sendai; Assess Conditions on the Ground Relief Effort for Japan Tsunami Researchers Empower Villagers to Install a Community Water Tap is 1st NGO to Complete Homes for Victims of Karnataka Floods Kalahandi district of Orissa January 16th, 2013 On November 7, 2012, ETW held a clothing distribution program for elderly and needy villagers in the Kalahandi district of Orissa, one of the poorest in the country. Abinash Mund and Chinmaya Behera, the local organizers, say that work on the project has progressed at a faster pace than they ever could have imagined when they began two years ago. ETW volunteers, with the help of gram-panchayats, survey Kalahandi’s local villages to find potential recipients for the program. At this latest distribution, approximately 200 villagers were presented with new clothing, along with a meal that was donated and prepared by members of the same village. Approximately 5000 saris, dhotis, and blankets were distributed between October and December of 2011. So far this season, over 3200 saris and dhotis have been donated, and more are expected. ETW is also celebrating the acquisition of a new ambulance in Kalahandi with which it plans to conduct local health camps. To date, over 1000 health cards have been prepared for the ongoing care of elderly and needy residents of 20 panchayats. Posted in News | No Comments » The Joy of Giving September 7th, 2012 ’s youth movement, AYUDH, organized its annual European youth empowerment gathering at ’s center in Germany from 15 – 21 July 2012. This year’s gather was themed, The Joy of Giving.” Each national AYUDH group represented at the gathering had made a pledge to implement at least one small joy of giving” project in their country. As the hosts of the gathering, the German group wanted to be one of the first ones to fulfill their pledge and contribute something to their community. Youth from all over Germany met in Berlin from 10 – 12 August 2012 to continue the spirit of giving. On the first day, the youth set up a stall at a charity-flea-market and sold items that friends and relatives had given to them, thereby raising funds to support the educational initiatives of in India. On the second day, inspired by Amma’s Amala Bharatam Campaign to clean public spaces in India, the youth undertook a clean-up drive in one of Berlin’s biggest public parks. Armed with brooms, gloves, trash bags and gripping tongs the youth split up into several groups to pick up thousands of cigarette buds, plastic items and broken pieces of glass from the grounds of the park. One of the participants remarked: The reactions of the people in the park were really different. Some people thanked us for our work, one little girl even took a gripping tong and helped us for one hour. When we were done, she wanted to take home some cleaning supplies in order to keep the park clean in the future. Others were really skeptical because they had never seen youngsters doing this kind of work on a voluntary basis – one elderly lady thought we were searching for something really valuable on the ground and when we told her that we were here to collect the trash, she said that we must be criminals, who do this kind of work as a punishment. Learning that we were doing the cleaning out of our free will, she obviously got a shock…” Though the youth were not able to clean up the entire park during this one day, they were happy to at least having cleaned up one part of it, thereby setting an example of selfless service and care for Nature. Posted in News | No Comments » Discovering Rikuzentakata May 5th, 2011 On April 15th, Br. Shantamrita Chaitanya, ’s representative in Japan and Director of Amrita Heart, our Japan-based representative organization, set out into the disaster-affected area. At the end of the road, he encountered the tsunami-hit coastal town of Rikuzentakata, which had been largely overlooked by relief organizations due to its remote location and small size. However, Br. Shantamrita found Rikuzentakata in desperate need of assistance, and after receiving a formal request from the town’s municipal government, he decided to concentrate ETW’s relief efforts on Rikuzentakata. This is the story of how it happened: I spent most of Friday, April 15th, collecting all the needed items for the disaster-relief work. We bought food, work gloves and masks to protect against infection and potential radiation. We also had to buy a cheap tent and took a few thin sleeping bags from the Tokyo ashram, as that was all we had. We knew it would be colder in the disaster area, but never imagined exactly how cold it really was. There were three of us: Nath Hoshi, Santosh Miyazawa and myself. By the time we left the city, it was almost 9:00 p.m., and we had 450 km to drive. Our destination was Ishinomaki City, where ETW’s efforts had been focused until then. It is said that Ishinomaki faced a tsunami of about 10 meters in height, which rushed 600 meters inland, destroying more than 500 houses in the coastal ports. The death toll here alone is recorded as more than 5,000 people, or about 19 percent of the total casualties. As we approached Ishinomaki, it was about 2:00 a.m., and the low-fuel lamp flashed in our car. There had been no gas station for a long way, and we continued to search in vain. Even in the areas of the city unaffected by the disaster, all the gas stations were closed. As we were already running on reserve fuel, we had to stop in front of a gas station and wait for it to open in the morning. We parked across the street, in the parking lot of a convenience store. As I got out of the car, I smelled the strong salty odor of seawater. There also seemed to be a tinge of decaying marine life or something along with it. We set up our tent right in the parking lot and were in our sleeping bags by 3:00 am. Though we were very tired, it was not easy to sleep, as the wailing of ambulances persisted for some time. Even in the middle of the night, people were walking past our tent, discussing their plans of where to go, what to do next, how to manage, and so on. Somehow, we fell asleep… A few hours later, Santosh woke me up, saying that the gas station was now open. We packed up our tent, got in the car and started our day. Relieved that our tank was now full, we proceeded to the university campus, where Viveka had been based during his relief work with IVUSA (International Volunteer University Student Association). Upon our arrival, we were impressed to see thousands of volunteers milling about, registering for volunteer work, pitching more and more tents, etc. Ishinomaki is just one hour from Sendai city, which has a population of one million and is the capital of Miyagi prefecture. Due to the ease of access in reaching Ishinomaki, thousands of volunteers had been flocking there to help. Seeing the level of organization and a seeming saturation of volunteers, we decided to travel farther north, to assess the situation in the next major residential area: Kesennuma. Due to the damaged roads, it took us two and a half hours to drive just 80 kilometers. More than 2,000 people had died in Kesennuma, and there seemed to be the same amount of damage as in Ishinomaki, but far less volunteers to help. When we arrived, disaster-relief supplies were being distributed to a few thousand refugees, who were lined up for hundreds of meters. Some of them were wearing only sandals and old, worn-out socks. It was obvious that they had lost everything in the disaster. Relief supplies were kept in neat rows, outside the gymnasium where the remainder was in storage. The refuges were divided into groups of 100 people, and allowed 10 minutes to collect...