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| Groups like Tonglen give these kids a chance. |
Welcome to The Windfall Project
THIS SITE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Dear friend,
I want you to understand a little bit of the heart of theWindfall project so
you can see it through my eyes. This summer I spent six months in India. I
traveled to areas such as Orissa (one of India's poorest states), Dharamsala
(home to hundreds of Tibetan refugees in exile), Calcutta (made popular by
its many leper colonies), Darjeeling, Mumbai, Delhi…all over.
On my very first day in Calcutta I saw something that changed my trip. It was
very simple really, just an old beggar woman. She was living in filthy rancid
streets. She came over to me and held out her hand. I gave her 10 rupees, which
is 1/5 of a US Dollar. She put her hand to my face as if I had given her more
than she could ever have hoped for. I looked into her eyes and saw something I
had never seen before. I saw that this woman was really not going to be ok. She
had almost no resources to pull herself out of her situation. There was no one
to look out for her. She was going to live the rest of her life in a state of
suffering and probably die in pain on the street with no one to mourn her
passing.
I could see that the light that shone in this woman’s eyes was the same light
that shines in my mother’s eyes, my father’s eyes, in the eyes of anyone that
has ever been dear to me at all. After that day I saw this woman in the eyes of
every beggar who approached me. These people needed help. Their needs had to
matter, but it’s almost like the problem had become so big that most people had
given up.
From that moment forward my trip became about researching the organizations
that were trying to alleviate the sufferings of these people. I found a few
that I thought were really doing a great job and vowed to help get more money
to them so their efforts could extend further. This was the birth of The
Windfall Project.
What is The Windfall Project?
The Windfall Project is a young budding organization dedicated to getting US
dollars into the helping hands of various grassroots organizations in India.
Windfall concentrates its proceeds heavily on the Tibetan Refugees living in
the foothills of the Himalayas and on the large population of Indians who have
been shunned by their own society and forced to live as beggars in some of
India’s harsher environments.
Windfall passes 100% of its proceeds on to four different organizations.
1.The Tibetan Welfare Office in Dharamsala
Many Tibetans who have fled China for freedom have been granted exile status in
India. They live challenging lives mostly along the foothills of the
Himalayays. The Tibetan Welfare Office is doing an outstanding job of assessing
their genuine needs and seeing that those needs are met, but to accomplish this
it must go into deficit every month. Windfall makes a high priority of helping
them with their valuable work.
2. Tonglen
Tonglen is an organization started by Tibetan exiles to assist some of the
members of the Untouchables caste that live down at the bottom of Dharamsala.
They provide a schooling for the children to help them catch up to their more
priviledged peers and then places them back into mainstream education as they
can afford to do so. They also provide some medical care for the children and
the parents who suffer from leprosy, typhoid and various other diseases common
to the area.
3. Hand in Hand
Hand in Hand is an American Organization that focuses primarily on providing free
health care and orphanage schooling to the most impoverished residents in
Orissa. They also have a child placement program that works to place children
back into mainstream education. These are children who have no parents,
children begging on the street with no one to show them anything better. Thanks
to organizations like Hand in Hand, these children are raised in a loving
environment, fed and educated. They now have a chance.
4. The Calcutta Rescue mission.
This valuable organization offers intelligently organized health care and vocational training to adults and children who would otherwise be forced to live lives of complete destitution.
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