I have been lax in my writing and I owe all my regular readers an apology. Inspite of my prolonged absence you have been commenting on my blog. Thank you very much. I am very grateful.
I am back again to share with you a story that really moved me. Last week, my husband returned from a business trip to Italy. He told me about a person named Alessandro whom he met at his client’s office. My husband said that he was a service engineer in his early twenties. Alessandro told my husband that he has visited India several times. He along with a group of friends run a program to help street children in Andhra Pradesh. It is not a typical orphanage he claims. They have appointed a mother and father to take care of a group of 20 children. They have named their program Manchi Kalalu meaning ’sweet dreams’ in Telugu. This group of young people regularly take time off and come all the way from Italy to spend time with these children. Most of the funds to support the project come from them and their friends.
My husband was simply amazed. He never expected to encounter such a person in Italy. Incidentally, our family has roots in Andhra Pradesh and many of our extended family lives there. How many times we would have walked those streets and not noticed the hungry children. No one ever discussed them. It was as if they did not exist. Here were a group of people, so far away from India , who have the heart and the will to make a difference to these children who are no way connected to them.
If you want to know more about Manchi Kalalu and how you can help, visit their website
What a wonderful group of people from Italy. Really touching to know about them. I have stayed in Hyderabad almost all my life. So true, I have walked the streets, lived there, gone around the city a thousand times but it never strikes me that poor people exist.
Thanks for sharing some wonderful thoughts Archana. Your posts really make me think and want to take some action.
Welcome back again Archana. Yes such delightful coincidences are the spice of life. Pretty inspiring to read about Alessandro.
Welcome back Archana. It is very inspriring to read about Manchi Kalalu. Thanks for sharing.
Good to know about Alessandro & his friends. Charity is emphasized in developed nations. Compassion for the less privileged is so much more prevalent there than in developing nations like India. Its all about exposure & awareness, I think.
Thanks Saraswathi, Krishnan and Sukumar.
Thanks Priya. I also feel it has something to do with their religion too, which places a lot of emphasis on service and charity. Since I am now involved in CSR activities, I find that a lot of people involved in community service seem to be Christians.
My husband also mentioned that there are no beggers of homeless people in Italy because the church makes sure they have a place to stay and food to eat.
This is very creditable. To come and do all this in a strange foreign locale requires a lot of courage and inner conviction.
Life presents us with so many opportunities to share with our less fortunate brethren in our daily life. It is not necessary that only money is required to do something good.
It could be our time or knowledge or anything else that we can share.
Archana, just to supplement, I have found Jains who also have made charity a part of their ethos.
Nice post Archana. And nice to know about Alessandro’s good work.
I wouldn’t agree though on the view that we in India always overlook the underpriviledged. There are countless organisations & individuals in our country who are working selflessly for helping out such people. It’s just that our media never focusses attention on anything that doesn’t have an ‘Ad-value’ attached to it.
But yes agreed that not everyone in our country thinks the same way, but then neither is everybody in Italy an Alessandro ! I agree to Priya’s viewpoint that compassion for less priviledged has to increase in India. We perhaps are too busy shaping up our own day to day lives that we fail to see the pain or suffering around us.
A thought-provoking post on your blog! While most Indians are willing to contribute money when it comes to devoting time for the under-privileged, it is not forthcoming.
I have always wanted to share a story of such social work activity going on in our land. It is very satisfying for both blogger and reader. Since my blog is committed to Humourous “Artickles”, I am thinking of starting another one to publish this kind of reports.
Hi Archana,
Your blog was passed on to me by a friend.. and I went on post after post …and I am quite thankful to her .
Thank you very much for putting out your thoughts for us. It shows the power of the written word that reading them took me to a different world rousing a lot of questions in the otherwise lethargic head. Thanks for sharing with us the experiences which compels us to think what and how we can do things to make a world a better place. It is these thoughts that must have brought Alessandro and his friends to come so far and work for the kids… and it is these thoughts that inspire and keep inspiring many more people in India and all over the world who are striving to make a difference.
And thought occured to me that Italians understood the underlying pain of the Italian of the East. (Telugu).
Mavin, Renjit, Gopi and Divya – Thank you very much for your thoughts.
Good one! Thanks for the link. Looked at the ManchiKalalu website now.