Jaipur: Around 200 Catholic nuns manage homes for terminally ill, patients diagnosed with HIV positive, elders and orphans in Rajasthan without much fanfare.
The Mission Sisters of Ajmer also hold public hearings and providing legal aid to needy in the northwestern Indian state.
Founded on April 26, 1911, from a single-room, the congregation has scaled up to many schools, colleges, hospitals, counseling centers, a center for HIV+ people. The order has its presence beyond Ajmer and Rajasthan.
Durlabji’s Avedna Ashram in Jaipur is being run by the Ajmer nuns for terminally ill cancer patients even those who were abandoned by family are being treated as family here.
Unlike nuns who pray and carry out social work in a school or within walls, the Ajmer sisters reach out to the needy in both rural and urban poor.
One of them, Sister Carol Geeta, is spearheading a campaign to provide legal aid to poor and marginalized people in central Rajasthan. Every year, she files an average of 50 police cases on behalf of the poor and deprived people.
An expert in human rights, she addressed United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. Here, sisters come from across the country, especially from southern states.
“Women here get exposed to all forms of service they can do in society. We firmly believe that emancipation of women cannot be possible without reforms pitched the women,” said Carol.
(Source: The Times of India)