The last week has been spent at Sooch Village, with a great team of volunteers and children. This is the model children’s home for The Miracle Foundation, built with a large donation from the Sooch Foundation. This children’s village is family style, with 19 cottages which each house 10 children and a Housemother. Most all the Housemothers have been here from the beginning and a good many of them will make their lives here. Susan, Sushma and Joyti are wonderful women who have dedicated their lives 24/7 to these children, as have Caroline, Mr. Kaul and the rest of the staff. Sooch Village is on 7 acres, with a prayer hall, play fields, a main house where the volunteers stay and the offices are located, a medical clinic/infirmary and a dining hall. Instead of a large institution or dormitory set-up like most orphanages, Sooch is more like individual homes and families who all live on one big estate. They all go to English school and are having many opportunities in life that they never would have had otherwise.
Shelley and friends at Sooch Village
This volunteer trip was a Medical Trip, and the volunteer group was awesome. The children from Rourkela were brought here for the visit, and it was a great vacation for them as well. Many wonderful things were accomplished; here is a mere highlight of the top achievements:
– 270 Physical Examinations were done on the children who live here, plus 35 more on lunch-and-learn students who come in from the surrounding village for a meal and schooling.
– 170 Dental Exams were performed on children, plus 15 house mothers. These included teeth cleaning, fluoride treatment, and many tooth extractions.
– 200 Eye Exams were completed.
The children were amazingly stoic. In the face of drawing blood and pulling teeth, there were only a few tears. The most incredible thing about all this is that medical records were being built, we were able to see where the children are physically and what needs to be done next for their health, and many of the kids were receiving medical or dental treatments for the first time in their lives.
Our amazing volunteer staff performed the following functions, and a big thanks goes out to each and every one of them:
– Doctors Lily Sood and Sangeeta Shah ran the medical clinic and performed all the physical exams and created medical records.
– Dr. Tracey Haas arrived early to set up the medical clinic and entire team.
– Amy Miller and Lori Hodge did the intake and took blood pressure at the medical clinic, among many other jobs to assist.
– Dentists Meera Chandy from Austin, and Indian dentists Preet Dawn, Dev Kumar Garg, Amit Porwal, Abhinav Agarual, and Tara Chand. These amazing dentists tirelessly did dozens of teeth cleaning and treatments every hour, assisted by Joanne Connerty and myself, Shelley Seale.
– Lisa Knaffla and Adrienne Cunningham converted all the medical records to electronic format, thanks to hours upon hours of data entry.
– Melina Lowden, Kathleen Evans and Dean Read performed all the eye exams.
– Lal Sood and Nick Oza were invaluable as translators. Nick also served as our professional photojournalist, along with Susan Reue who also took thousands of amazing photographs.
– Keith Hajovsky and Jody Castano shot the videos of children for their sponsors, a task that is somewhat akin to wrangling rattlesnakes.
– Tyla Tingle and Susan Barry were on hand to evaluate the need and possibilities for an ESL program, and where the kids are in terms of learning English.
– MaryEllen Pietruszynski, Executive Director of the Sooch Foundation, came in to see the occupied and full-fledged village for the first time since its grand opening.
– And enough thanks cannot be given to Jasdeep Sandhu, who pretty much coordinated and ran the entire medical clinic and acted as the liaison between the doctors and operations staff to disseminate information; and Barbara Joubert, The Miracle Foundation’s indefatigable travel coordinator who somehow manages the thousands of arrangements that go into getting everyone here and making it all happen. A big thanks as well to the staff on the ground in India, including all the house mothers and Sooch staff, and Mr. Kaul, the head staff member at Sooch Village.
Shelley Seale
TMF Ambassador and
author of “The Weight of Silence”