pstrongIrving, Texas, September 24, 2005:/strong The Hindu Temple in Irving Texas, opened its doors for Hurricane Rita evacuees Thursday night. Many agencies like Red Cross, Texas 211, Texas Department of Public Safety were informed about availability of its premises for use as shelter./p pbr/When email’s went out to Temple devotees, offers of supplies and help poured in, clogging the phone lines. Volunteers were busy redirecting calls about offers of help to their personal cell phones, so that the main lines could be left open for calls from evacuees and agencies calling to get latest capacity information./p p”It was heart warming to see two kids jumping up and down in joy, just because they could have a warm shower after being cramped in an ac-less pickup for 24 hours”, said one of the volunteers./p pDoctors from the Hindu community were on call, and provided valuable assistance to evacuees who were pregnant, had stomach aches, flu-like symptoms, etc./p pCalls poured in from agencies as far out as California, trying to locate shelter for evacuees still on the road. Calls from Security company employees, Corporations, Government agencies, other charities trying to place evacuees was indicative of the enormous effort by the whole community. Updated lists of shelters with available space were all over the Internet, and thanks to agencies maintaining those lists, it was rather smooth to find shelters for evacuees that reached a full shelter./p pIn all, about 200 people found shelter at the Hindu Temple. When asked regarding his views about helping those in need, R.K.Panditi, a volunteer, said “The Gita has said that this kind of charity, with no expectation in return, is the best kind”. Gita is one of the main holy books of Hinduism./p pbr/Dr. Jagannath Rao of the Hindu temple said “It was very encouraging to see so many devotees that showed up to help. Some volunteers had to be turned away.” Manoj Parikh, President of the Temple said “Hindu temple is open for shelter to all Americans, and we are happy to see evacuees from all walks of life being served”./p p(Source: a href=”http://www.dfwhindutemple.org/”www.dfwhindutemple.org/a )/p

pstrongKerala, India, September 23, 2005:/strong Indian spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi Friday announced US$1 million in aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina that battered the US in August. “Our Amritanandamayi Center in the US will hand over this amount to the US government,” Mata told reporters at a press conference in her Vallikavu ashram near here. She also said so far her ashram has completed 1,200 of the 6,200 tsunami-relief houses it has undertaken to construct throughout India and Sri Lanka. “Even though the ashram has pledged US$23 million in tsunami relief aid, the effective value of the amount is closer to $46 million because so much of the work is being done by our volunteers,” said Amma, as she is popularly known. She said her ashram was helping construct new houses in tsunami-affected areas in Kerala, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu and also in Sri Lanka. India lost 10,000 people to the December 26 disaster. “We are not just building houses, but roads, wells, schools, community halls and health care centers,” added Amma./p pAmma now plans to rehabilitate young girls aged between 13 and 18 who have ended up in brothels in Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad. “The present rules in the country when it comes to rehabilitation of these young girls in this age group are not favorable. So our team of lawyers is working on it and we are moving slowly but steadily in this regard. “Once a clear-cut picture emerges in this, we would start rehabilitation centers for such victims, and we would also provide employment to these girls,” said Amma. For Kerala, Amma announced she would run a program to tackle the increasing number of suicides in the state./p p(Source: a href=”http://news.webindia123.com/” target=”_blank”news.webindia123.com/a )/p