Marmalade Sunsets: Ashraya Initiative for Children orphanage, Pune, India

As my eye-lashes converge at the pictures below of cheerful little smiles in the kitchen, mixing flour while consuming exorbitant amounts of cookie dough as the milk jubilates in a speed frenzy to reach the floor at maximum impact, I wonder what they must have endured in their early years of growing up. These kids are now each others' family…once abandoned, sleeping between abhorrent railway tracks, four-year-old's sniffing glue or anything to get high, seven-year-old's prostituting the streets because there is no other alternative. I cannot even begin to think what would have happened to these orphaned children had it not been for Julia Neubauer and her team in Pune, India.

At the tender age of fifteen, Julia decides to relinquish the conveniences and amenities of Austrian high school life and is adamant that she will graduate from high school in India. There is just no other way for her. From sharing a two bed-roomed shack with forty children who were suffering from Tuberculosis, to living in the slums of Mumbai over a period of three months, Julia has seen some things very few of us would be able to swallow. This incredible journey led her and a group of close friends to start the Ashraya Initiative, an orphanage supporting more than 120 children in the slums in India.

The orphanage currently operates a Residential program, housing orphaned children from the slums; an Education Outreach program, proving educational materials to children from ages four to thirteen years, who, in most cases have never seen a classroom, and a Health Outreach program, providing medical treatment to sometimes life-threatening situations.

Right now, Ashraya Initiative is seeking assistance in the following areas:

• C.P.A - in need of C.P.A., preferably someone with knowledge of Non-Profit and/or Charity law.
• Graphic Designer - fundraising/website materials and assistance in designing.
• Global volunteers interested in volunteering at the orphanage in Pune, India

For those of you who may be interested in getting involved, please contact Julia Neubauer at julia@ashrayainitiative.org or visit their website at http://www.ashrayainitiative.org

To view our video interview, please see www.travelvolunteersearch.blogspot.com
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India NGO Network: Interview with We Flap

I walked into this coffee shop one afternoon and was met with a beaming and vibrant smile from Chikki Venkat, Founding Director of We Flap, an organization aimed at matching global volunteers with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) throughout India through a very sophisticated database. I was drawn to Chikki's excitement for this project, her motivation to step outside of her comfort zone to work with thousands of NGO's who are in a real need to plant themselves on the global map, as well as the advanced technology We Flap executes in delivering their services: www.weflap.org

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