Sewa Responds to Indian Community’s Growing Needs in Houston .. Once Again!

By Sachin Dabir

HOUSTON: Hospitalization  death and bereavement in the family, medical emergencies, family counselling are the increasing but sparsely met needs of our growing community in USA. Recognizing this, Sewa International initiated a “Family Case Management Services” program in 2013 and has helped many families since then. However, demands for these services have been growing steadily and Sewa wanted to step up its efforts to be able to help more families. Hence Houston chapter of Sewa International, organized a 2 days conference cum workshop on November 18-19th at Keshav Smruti to create awareness and impart first level of training to new volunteers. Indian community in Houston responded overwhelmingly to this call and over 30 volunteers attended this workshop to get initiated to support fellow community members.
Through Sewa’s Family Services program Indian community would get access to help during crises and difficult times such as death and bereavement, family emergencies, medical and home care, accidental situations. Sewa’s experienced volunteers help families find right resources, accompany them to face difficult and delicate situations, connect them with professionals to understand complex problems in simple language, arrange for help in transportation, meal supply and translation. All this help is summed beautifully by our experienced volunteer Shri Madan Ji Luthra “We try to be one of the family members of the affected family but with lot more calm and composure so that affected members feel comfortable and re-assured.”

In this workshop, new volunteers got training and insight into how to address these situations by Shri Girish Mehta, founder of Indian Circle of Caring (ICC) of Boston, MA, and also member of National Advisory Board of Sewa International. In the spirit of collaboration with like-minded people and organizations, Sewa works closely with ICC to leverage its experience in the similar field. Shri Girish ji Mehta graciously extends all the help and share his experience of over 10 years in Family services in Massachusetts and New Hampshire area. Girish ji was very impressed with the volunteers “The intense desire to give back to community combined with high energy and active participation is remarkable. It is not easy to reach the conference venue at 8 in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. Only a great self-motivation and confidence in Sewa’s activities can drive over 30 volunteers to spend 2 days in training.”

Commitment and seriousness in providing services to the community was exemplified by the full-time presence of Sewa’s National Executive Vice President Shri Arun ji Kankani and Houston Chapter President Shri Gitesh ji Desai. Shri Arun ji guided the volunteers in working together as teams and creating scalable model for serving the community. Shri Gitesh ji Desai provided insight into needs of Houston community and how to partner with other organizations. In Gitesh ji’s words “Our community has great expectations from Sewa and specially after the massive work done by Sewa volunteers during Harvey relief and rehabilitation, community has developed lot of trust and admiration towards Sewa. Over 30 volunteers giving their precious time to get trained on Saturday and Sunday is a testimony of their commitment”.

Shri Arun Ji Kankani added “providing services to families in need is in line with Sewa’s belief ‘Nar Sewa is Narayan Sewa – Serving Humanity is Serving Divinity’. Sewa is scaling up its efforts to meet the need of our community and it is heartening to note such overwhelming response. We would continue to partner with other community organizations to spread the word and make our services available to the families in need”.

Sewa would conduct more such training in the coming months.

Interested volunteers can write to fs@sewausa.org  Sewa’s family services helpline number is 832-900-9354.

Sewa USA is 501 (c) (3) Hindu faith-based non-profit, charitable organization.

All donations (cash, cars, clothes, securities, etc.) are tax-deductible. (Tax Id# 20-0638718).

Sewa serves humanity regardless of race, religion, color, gender or nationality.