The Healing Balm

– Yogesh Chopra

Philanthropy is the altruistic concern for the less fortunate, a means of reaching out to share their woes and to touch lives. At SXCCAA, we have, since our inception, woven our activities around a philanthropic core, for we pride ourselves as men and women for others.

This year too was no exception and we reached out to a number of areas which we felt needed us. The St.Xavier's school, Gurap, run by Jesuit fathers helped us to provide the children with school uniforms, stationary and other play equipments like two four seater see-saw's, slides, carom boards, badminton sets, footballs, cricket sets etc.

The three extension centers run in collaboration with NSS were provided with steel almirahs for use in their offices. The bonds with the Aila affected village of Bholakhali, adopted by us, was further strengthened when we provided the local school with various sports equipments.

We also presented to the Little Sisters of the Poor a LCD projector for use by the inmates, the old people of the home. This was in addition to the eight wheel chairs provided by us in the last year.

For the Paikhala school, run in collaboration with the NSS, we provided the much needed excise books and other stationary for use by the students.

Prayas, which is a part of the ‘college to village’ initiative, the dream of Rev. Fr. Dr. J.Felix Raj, saw us providing a day's meal to about 450 village children. The other side of the coin, ‘village to college’ also saw enthusiastic participation of members who welcomed the visiting children from Bholakhali and took care of their fooding for a day during their stay in the college.

We are also the proud associates of the NSS and SXC organized “Sishu Mela” for the children of all the centers and villages. Many of our members volunteered and sponsored various items of the goody bags that were given to the children. We are proud of our association and would like to continue the same in the years to come.

We received many pleas for financial help on medical grounds, especially from the college staff and we were happy to meet all of them to the best of our abilities.

The process of handing over the Paikhala School to the Government is on and the statutory compliances are now being met with. Some urgent construction work to save the school building from the vagaries of nature have also be taken up on an urgent basis. The salaries of the school staff have also been raised in keeping with the times. A fresh set of text books will also be provided to the children to replace the existing ones. Distribution of blankets to the needy is also in the agenda. We are also in the process of adding one more class room in the school to meet its growing needs.