The Catholic Church’s leading charity in the country, Caritas India, is currently seeking to welcome Indians from other religions as well to help it work for social change and development. Public relations officer, Amrit Sangma, told ucanews.com that Caritas India has initiated a special plan to widen its volunteer base and Sangma also highlighted that the agency currently has some around 20,000 volunteers helping in the fields of health, education, the environment and fighting human-trafficking and in the next five years, Caritas plans to widen this volunteer base to million.
As reported by ucanindia.in, Fr. Frederick D’Souza, Executive Director of Caritas India, remarked that “Some NGOs only offer short-term support in times of necessity, like natural calamities, in the form of food and relief aid which does not empower people for a long-term change.” Further, he added, “Charity work may temporarily satisfy the needs of people but it will end up making them dependent, what we need is social change and not people’s dependency.”
Hindu leader Swami Chidananda Saraswati, co-founder at the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, stressing the need for proper sanitation said that “Service should be based on need and not based on religion, we need to move from temples to build more toilets.”, as reported by ucaindia.in. Muslim leader Mohammed Salim Engineer, secretary general of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind emphasized that “Islam stands for peace and exhorts its followers to work for peace and a true Muslim will join hands with others in society to help those in need.” as reported by ucanindia.in
