We are so grateful for the visit of Kirsti and her daughter Isabella from JOS in Winter 2019 in our project Om Shanthi in Tiruvannamalai/South India. They could see how much beneficial work is done with your kind donations. Here are some information, how our work continued during the year until now. Indian summer starts in April with temperatures going up to 120 °F in July. There was again a serious lack of water, so that we had to buy water for many months for Old Age Home until now. In the beginning of May, school started. Like every year, 101 young widows got school bags with all necessary utensils for their (175) children from first to fifth standard class. They all enjoyed lunch together and felt honored and appreciated as a little family, even without a husband. As we want to change the old minds, we also promote marriages of young widows (which is a No-go in the old system) when the conditions are good. So we sponsored the marriage of Kalai and Manimaran and Patchiamal and her husband. All of them are long-term staff members and reliable characters.(Widows are always in danger of being misused in many ways.) Renuga, another young woman, became widow at 18 . Her life seemed to be finished, when she came to us to ask for help. Now she started her career in a medical training center. With help of your kind donations she will be an auxilary nursing midwife after 2 years’ study. These is all the latest news regarding our work with young widows and their children! What happened in Old Age Home in the meantime? Kannamal was the 16th woman to die peacefully in our home. As usually there were no family members, so Manoharan performed all necessary ceremonies that would ordinary fall to a son to do. As usual we continue to find old, abandoned women along the streets. For them, the Om Shanthi Home was created. One of them is Alamelu (photo), who was at first too weak to speak. Now she is happy in our Home. Another one is Unnamalai, who was also begging for food. She was her husband’s first wife, but unfortunately could not have any children, while the second wife had two sons. The family is too poor to take care of her and mistreated her. Now she is with us. Thank you for all your generous help and support. Our work could not happen without it. Please continue to donate for the poorest of the poor, so that the young widows and their children have a life in the future and the abandoned old women have a safe heaven til they die. There is a film in Youtube, which shows our project. Please watch it: Widows of India – Om Shanthi Project. With deep gratitude Anna Etter (Project Lead) and Paulette Elberti (Lead in USA.)