'Dream Centre' in works to help girls in India caught in sex trade - JT McVeigh
It doesn’t take much to help a lot. Take breakfast for instance. While you’re looking after your bacon addiction, you just might be helping someone a world away.
That’s the hope for the fundraising breakfast being hosted at Timothy Christian School on Saturday.
Spearheaded by Jeremy and Lalitha Viinalass, members of Hi-Way Pentecostal Church, the breakfast will help raise funds to construct an orphanage, a Dream Centre, a place dedicated to protect young girls from the sex trade in India.
India is a magnificent place boasting more than a sixth of the world’s population. The country is riding a wave of economic growth, enjoying an expansion of education and technology and is now considered among the elite of industrialized countries.
Yet the country is weighed down with both rural and urban poverty. And, although deemed illegal by the government, slavery is still rampant in many of the poorer regions with children being caught up in bonded labour or the sex trade.
How do you help those children?
For the Viinalass family, a solution came to them during a family visit to India and it started with an organization called Good News India.
“There is a family connection there,” said Lalitha. “The founder of the charity is actually my cousin, Dr. Faiz Rahman.
“When he began this work more than 20 years ago, we followed it at arms length, not really knowing what was what. But as his ministry expanded everything became clearer.”
Presently, more than 2,200 children are housed and educated in 25 Dream Centres throughout India. The children stay at the centre until they have either a vocation or have entered university.
“By supporting the child until they are 16 and then releasing them, this just puts them back into the poverty cycle,” said Jeremy. “Having the child live at the centre, develop as part of the community and seeing her through to either finding a trade of entering university, it helps lift them out of that cycle, and they are a whole person.”
A family trip to India in 2008 with their children, including their 13-year-old daughter, made them realize how different her life would’ve been without ‘hope or promise.’
“We visited one of the orphanages with our children and thought, we are considering whether or not to get braces for our daughter and these kids are worried about whether or not they have food or a place to sleep,” the parents remembered.
Seeing first-hand what was possible — there were over a 100 young girls in this orphanage — and how happy and full of hope the girls were, led to the couple deciding to help.
Lalitha’s cousin went to university in the United States and had long set up his foundation there. Having had a good response north of the border, the Good News India charity has been introducing the foundation to Canada this past year.
The Viinalass’ felt that this would be the perfect time to, as they say, “put Barrie on the map” and fund a new Dream Centre, and to make it a full community effort.
“We have found the response to the project to be incredibly kind,” said Lalitha. “I think that people are trying to find a way to help, for this is a hot topic these days, girls and their future, whether it be the Middle East where they aren’t allowed to get an education or in other places in the world with human trafficking. People are very attuned to what’s going on.”
The weekend provides an opportunity to find out more about Good News India and to meet the founder Dr. Faiz Rahman.
Saturday’s breakfast is $12 and is served beginning at 9 a.m. at Timothy Christian School. Dr. Rahman will be there to answer questions. Sunday morning he will be speaking again with with one of the centre’s residents Sonja Sherpo at Hi-Way Pentecostal.
For information, to get tickets or make a donation, visit www.hiwaychurch.org, or call 705-728-0720.
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