Jesuit Fr. Julian S. Das is the former was the editor of The Herald, the weekly of the Calcutta archdiocese weekly, and former director of the Jesuit-managed Chitrabani, founded in 1970 in Kolkata as the first media center in eastern India. He is a correspondent for Matters India, a news portal that collaborates with GSR and focuses on religious and social issues.
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Korean nun changes the face of Bus-Park slum in Nepal
Since March 2009, when Sr. Martha Park Byongsuk first came to the Bus-Park slum of Pokhara, Nepal, life has improved for its impoverished residents. Byongsuk and fellow sisters have connected them with medical care; they also have launched St. Paul's Happy Home, a place for children to go after school, eat a meal, bathe and study.
Nepal village's preschool prepares children, parents for formal education
School Sisters of Notre Dame manage a preschool has transformed the lives of villagers in Bandipur, Nepal. The Seto Gurans Child Development Center helps marginalized children succeed at the critical nursery school level, enabling them to prosper when they begin formal education. The preschool involves parents in daily classroom activity, and has helped bridge class separation within the village.
Home visits and care bring hope to people with HIV/AIDS in southern India
Sr. Alphonse Raj, a member of the Sisters of the Cross of Chavanod, ministers to those living with HIV/AIDS, who are often neglected and ostracized by their families and society after contracting the virus. If infected couples have children who are born with the virus, Raj's New Dawn center adopts the baby. About 50 such children now stay at the center, which provides basic needs and education. In addition, New Dawn's campaigns and programs in the past decade have helped many shed their fears.
Three years after Nepal earthquake, rebuilt village approaches sustainability
Sr. Aisha Kavalakatt of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth started organizing women's empowerment groups in the village of Koshi Dekha, Nepal, in 2014. When the 7.8-magnitude earthquake April 25, 2015, leveled hundreds of villages and killed about 9,000 people in the small mountainous country, she pushed through blocked roads and returned to the village of 1,700 people five days later to help with recovery. She says she won't be needed soon, expecting Koshi Dekha to be self-sufficient by 2020.