A quick note to all friends here.

Why I was not around for a long time and what is going on with my life in case some of you are interested. I also did not wish anyone properly this year either during Christmas or on New Year's Eve.

The reason being I have been working round the clock to set up the Women's Empowerment Group I had been talking about ever since all those horrile things started happening to me.

We started a group on FB to see how many would be interested in the cause. Fifteen people joined the online community from the time it was created. Not many I agree but then again we have been around only about three weeks nd this kind of thing takes time to happen.

I met up with a group that is a consortium of doctors dedicated to treat underprivileged. Spoke about our group to them and enlisted their help and support.

Two friends from OS has been constantly,  - no three actually - if you consider Chris and Noel that kindly helped us register the website - working night and day, working right through their Christmas holidays, helping to create the stuff you need to enlist help and support or build awareness.

We are all immersed in studying, reserch, communicating with possible partners, seeking out collaborators, building our content, the org itself. I plod through technicalities and boring things like registration rules, by laws and sometimes my head swims sa I lose the drift of thought in the material am reading nad the words stare at me and I get up to go wash my face.

We are contemplating a consortium of people dedicated to work for the empowerment of women and their children and possibly their families too, because it is difficult to draw the line betweent the woman herself nad her family.  Sometimes, her families welfare might be the only way to ensuring her wellbeing.

Volunteering is not common in India. 80 % of the population is busy just surviving. So, when people are invited to consider social work, they feel it is the rich man's job or people expect to get paid. Am worried about where to find the money to begin with because even if I ask someone to go out nad help me get some prinouts, they expect something. Most people seem to expect to get paid for work they do :) well of course.

The model I envisage, though, ought to be nearly virtual, almost money-less, with a corpus fund, if that exists, existing in the bank accounts of members that volunteer to serve.  Though of course, I know about audits - idea sounds crazy now - all I know right now is that memebership is going to hve to be free and that we might not seek monetary donations but create income generating projects to sustain the developmental work. It should be good to see people contributing mostly through services, providing training, consultancy, equipment etc free of charge.

WERL power ideally ought to be the power of committment members bring into the work. Maybe we can have something like mandatory so-many-hours-services from every active member - difficult - but then again, if people are working for their own upliftment, and good citizenship is ultimately, I think, about making each other's lives slightly easier, then it should be possible. Instead of waiting for governments to do stuff, citizens get up and tke initiative and help themsleves.

We work for ourselves, our children - 

Well, what happens to tax benefits people expect and how to align with government's incentive to do good by 'donating to good cause'? Maybe that paradigm itself (incentive to do good) would have to change too sometime.

With my life  somehow I have realised, money does not do it. I have always had jobs, money, been educated well too - yet, I have been rendered powerless in crisis many a time. 

Ultimately the greatest resource is the people one knows and can call 'friends' is the learning of my life... hope WERL  can easily incorporate this ... 

 Looks like that would take sometime and work before it happens.

So, there is still the work of designing "how do get across to people that might be looking for an opportunity to do something or orgs that might be looking for creative collaboration to further their mission". We have no blue print for that yet.

We expect to be able to: provide support to women that wish to do something on their own, e.g.  start a small business or travel out of town for a job, provide her relief when it is required, mainly in an emergency,  then ensuring restoration of stability in her life.

In the beginning, we hope to be able to start a primary school to fund our project, instead of me working for others and using my own salary to run WERL - that is what we decided to call our organization by the way:  Women's Empowerment and Relief League. 

So, you see, that has kept us from being here. You have all been on my mind constantly.  All the more so because at a time when I nearly lost my life, was at the verge of breaking down and giving up on life, hurt and wounded,  a lot of you stood by me then and I think I was kept alive so I could pass on the 'good touch' that nurtures, keeps people safe and helps them survive with dignity and grace.... wish you all a very happy, exciting and satisfying year ahead.

Hope you also continue to support us - and find some time to serve with the cause of helping women and children survive dismal living conditions, repression and crueltyto their minds and beings. 

If  you believe in what we have set out to do, can spare some time and would like to pitch in and get involved in the process of getting this off the ground, please do not hesitate to let me or Metaness or Newton know.