As you know, besides our Om Shanthi Old Age Home, we also support about 200 young widows with about 300 children, who live in many villages around our town. We take care by repairing their houses, their medical needs and above all of the education of their children. Their education is the only way to fight poverty and the stigma of being the child of a widow. As there is no opportunity for these children to learn computer techniques in their government schools, we built a computer classroom in our Om Shanthi Old Age Home Garden. Since January 2025 students have had access to six computers and Amu, a professional educator, who teaches computer science every day after school to our widows and their children. Each course takes 4 months to complete with one hour of daily instruction and practice: already two cohorts of 30 students have graduated with their certificate in computer science and can look forward to a successful future. The program’s secondary purpose is to bring our old widows and young students together in order to dismantle long-standing prejudices against widows which are still engrained in society. They celebrate together and visit each other on special festival occasions. We have recently added a new kitchen and are providing traditional dancing lessons to local girls in our Home too. Our widows are well. Already, 29 of our sweet ladies have died peacefully, and new ones are arriving constantly….
Paulette Elberti (US project lead) and Anna Etter (Project Lead in Germany)
[email protected]
