Cooperation with India Trust

In mid-February 2020, Dr. David Pankiraj visited us in Berlin. He is a pastor in a Catholic community near Pforzheim and is very committed to the aid project “India Trust – Home for the Children” in Sivagangai, a small city in the south of India.

India Trust takes care of girls whose family background usually wouldn’t give them access to education and thus to a self-determined future. In bitterly poor rural India, women are at the bottom of the social ladder and are worst affected by poverty and neglect.

To improve these unworthy living conditions, India Trust has built a school residence in Sivagangai. Currently 69 girls between the ages of 11 and 18 live there and attend the nearby school. In the future India Trust would like to support them also after graduation, for instance during their preparation for vocational training or university. For this purpose, another building is planned for the older girls, in which they can prepare for graduation and the training afterwards.

This concept convinced us and so we decided to support this project: For starters SBW will cover part of the financing costs for the new building. After that we plan to invite two graduates from Sivagangai to Berlin so that they can improve their command of the English language and get to know the German culture.

Of course, we would be very happy if they decide to apply for an SBW Berlin scholarship afterwards. Studying in Germany will hopefully help them to spread their newly gained knowledge in India and support charitable projects such as India Trust in the future.