A few team members are in India - Gujarat at the moment in the "trenches".  They have gruelling hours and challenging conditions to try and meet up with all the ultra poor families we support. Here's an overview and update of our team effort:

A group of volunteers under the leadership of Razia Nathani Suleman has been engaged with our Gujarat Community for 12 years.  Gujarat has a huge Ismaili presence.  There are numerous pockets of Ultra Poor Jamats, both in urban areas such as Ahmadabaad, Porbandar, Jamnagar, etc.  and rural areas such as Maliya Hatina, Bhuj, Keshod, etc.

After collaborating with the local institutions, we have been providing various types of assistance and support with the sole objective of improving the quality of life of these families. We have identified families whose children are in desperate need of education and direction, which in the long run, will Inshallah, alleviate not only poverty but illiteracy as well. Our team handles these funds personally and 100% of the donations are spent on providing support in various ways to ultra poor families in Gujarat.

To date, we have been involved with over 125 families and about 100 young students are enrolled in good hostels and most of them in English medium schools. We have numerous success stories if you wish to read these or want more info, please do let us know.

Our work has been made possible by very many generous donors both from within and outside the community. We have incorporated checks and balances in our system both in Canada and in Gujarat which enables our work to be accountable and transparent.  We invite all and any enquiries regarding our work, and will be more than happy to sit down with you to share our humble successes and of course our many challenges.  One such challenge is that team members have to take time out from work and come up with their own expenses to travel to and stay in India for about a month, year after year.  

Here they are talking to community service volunteers in Bhavnagar.  

We are so proud of the 15 girls we have sent to Sidhpur Hostel with the help of donors who sponsor a child or two or three...

 I have not gone this year and with the help of other team members, am sending the newsletters out as fast as they can get the info to us to process.  Getting quite a few enquiries to help us, so here's the Pay Pal link that used to be here before, thank you for all your support and encouragement towards this cause.  As we are really small, we cannot provide any tax receipts/benefits, sorry:

paypal.me/NHassam