Asha's Mission

TRANSFORMING THE LIVES OF THE URBAN POOR

The Asha Community Health and Development Society was conceived in 1988 in response to the acute and distressing needs of the urban poor in New Delhi. Now 18 years later, with a vision to love and serve the poor in the name and spirit of Christ, the Asha family has grown to encompass over 300,000 people living in 46 slum colonies. With clear vision, focused goals, articulated objectives and well-implemented interventions, Asha reaches out to slum dwellers in Delhi to bring about a holistic and lasting improvement in their lives through the empowerment of individuals and communities and through raising their health standards and the conditions in which they live. Alongside tending to the physical needs of the slum dwellers, Asha also seeks to proclaim the good news of Christ through words and action and is seeing many people come to faith in Jesus Christ; small slum churches are being established within the slums as many testify to the love, faithfulness and goodness of God in their daily lives.

www.asha-india.org

What it's About

My initial entry, "The Brief" is part of the flyer telling friends and family about our trip to India in February 2007. It is not my intention to maintain this blog for very long, instead I plan to track a few of the things leading up to the trip and then to do a write up after we return.

As I like to carry my camera around too, I'm hoping to be able to document as much of the trip, as is appropriate, with words and images.

Raising Money
Some of preparation is about raising money for our trip and to take to ASHA for our project there.

More on how we're raising funds for the project soon.

The Brief

In February 2007, a mission team from St Stephen’s Church, Twickenham, will travel to New Delhi, India, to spend nine days serving the poor in the slums of this vast city. Working with the Indian NGO ‘Asha’, the aim of the mission is to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ to just some of the three million people who struggle daily to live in one of the worst environments in the world.

As a group, we will undertake some manual work to help improve the community clinic at the centre of the Zakhira slum colonies in West Delhi. We will also spend time each day with individuals and groups of slum dwellers, listening to their stories, encouraging them in all they do, performing workshops with the children and generally working with the Asha team to bring hope into a seemingly hopeless situation.