SOME INFORMATION ABOUT CMC VELLORE WHICH WE ALL SUPPORT FOVV PATRON DAVID PRICE AT CMC VELLORE RECENTLY ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE MEETS INDIA

Transcription

1 SOME INFORMATION ABOUT CMC VELLORE WHICH WE ALL SUPPORT FOVV PATRON DAVID PRICE AT CMC VELLORE RECENTLY ENJOYED A COCONUT DRINK OUTSIDE CMC VELLORE VISITED THE GAULT LIBRARY, CMC VELLORE 1 MET THE NEW DIRECTOR, DR SUNIL CHANDY ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE MEETS INDIA Dr. Dayalan Devanesen (Batch of 1963) was invited by the Australian Consulate General in Chennai to speak about his life as a Royal Flying Doctor and his work with the Aboriginal people in the deserts of Central Australia, as part of the Madras Week celebrations in August. Jennifer Arul, a well known TV journalist from NDTV-Hindu, interviewed Dayalan on her program 'We Connect' the following day. Dayalan started the interview by talking about his meeting with Dr Ida Scudder when he was a boy. CHITTOOR CHALLENGE AND 'JATARA' As well as the cross country race, the Chittoor Challenge, CMC is inviting schools, colleges and the general public to visit the Chittoor Campus on Saturday, October 06, 2012 for a Jatara (or mela) and Health Care Exhibition. There will be carnival games and activities, food stalls and competitions. Departments will put up interesting displays and interactive presentations about their activities, with a special emphasis on reducing health risks through healthy lifestyles. Health care training and career information will also be given. CMC ALUMNI AND FRIENDS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT THE WORK AT CMC Sulatha Minosan, formerly at Melton, Victoria, and now in Queensland, is providing funds to be used for diabetic patients at the Low Cost Effective Care Unit and Dr Sydney Paul in Deniliquin is providing funds for the training of health care workers being sent from Vellore into remote areas. Thanks Sulatha and Sydney for your special purpose support of CMC.

2 FROM THE PRESIDENT FRIENDS OF VELLORE VICTORIA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Thank you to all who attended the Friends of Vellore Victoria Annual General Meeting held on Saturday 11 August, It was a special event enjoyed by all due to the organizational skills of Louise Joy, our Secretary, with music playing, tables covered with white linen upon which was served afternoon tea and the meeting, of course. Our Guest Speaker; Sunny Philip, shared with us his work at Vellore, Transform 4Life in particular. He is the listening ear for many women who have been abused and, now they are offered the opportunity to break their silence and be heard. What an incredible gift to women and, such a cultural change for many who have been kept silent for so long. Transform 4Life is a gift to them. Read the full text of his presentation on Page 4. The Annual General Meeting was brief and, while the Executive Committee members stood down, they were unanimously re-elected for another year. Please read the FOVV Financial Report for 2011/2012 on Page 3. AUSTRALIAN FRIENDS OF VELLORE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING HELD IN HOBART, TASMANIA ON 18 AUGUST, 2012 The Australian FOV Board Meeting opened with prayer led by Sunny Philip who also read Luke 11:5 and commented on three kinds of people; those who have no food or accommodation, those who have food, accommodation but nothing left over and, those who have food, accommodation and something to give. He said that we could all be in one of these situations at any one time. He then spoke of the work at CMC Vellore. Australian FOV President Ian Olver commented on the value of the Teleconference between the States as it had set a precedent for the Annual Meeting with concerns and issues having been raised and placed on the agenda for the Meeting. He made mention also of the FOV website and of the need to find other ways to attract funding. All States could use the website as a way of attracting funds with the added function of being able to donate online, where appropriate. The Australian Board will also see what it can do to assist in supporting the Friends of Vellore in Christchurch, New Zealand. He also made mention that there plenty of DVD s still available for use by State FOV s. Each State reported on their respective activities. Some of the fundraising activities differed. Tasmania included Garage Sales, Church Stalls and Curry Dinners while Queensland members collected Stamps, which are sent to Vellore. All included an Annual Dinner in their program with Adelaide s Annual Dinner having a guest list of 350. Victoria has some special interests and these include The Ted Gault Memorial Trust and the Memorandum of Understanding between CMC Vellore and Melbourne University which has been developed and set up to support CMC medical graduates coming to Melbourne University. FOV Victoria is indebted to Louise for her desire to continue to carry on the work of her parents in supporting medical work through CMC Vellore. Each State was asked to keep in touch with their respective Alumni members and, while some were constrained, others were successful in maintaining and developing links. The Australian AGM next year will be in Darwin where it is hoped that a Northern Territory FOV will be set up with support of the Darwin Alumni. Planning is underway and it may include a visit from the new CEO of CMC Vellore. Yours in His love, Liz Guiver, President FOVV 2

3 Friends of Vellore, Victoria FOV Victoria INCOME & EXPENDITURE FOR 1 JULY 2011 TO 30 JUNE 2012 Balances b/forward at 1 July 2011 INCOME General Cheque Acct Investment Acct TOTAL Donations fundraising dinner Donations in lieu of dinner Donations other General Cheq acct Interest Investment Acct Interest Fundraising Dinner Fundraising Raffle - Dinner Fundraising Book Sales Fundraising Movie Fundraising Raffle - Movie Fundraising Olive Oil TOTAL INCOME $13, $22, $36, $ 2, $ $17, $ $ 1, $ 3, $ $ $ 1, $ $ $30, EXPENDITURE Donations to Aust Vellore Board - CMC Gen Cheque Acct Fees Fundraising Dinner Fundraising Movie TOTAL EXPENDITURE $21, $ $ 4, $ 1, $26, Balances at 30 June 2012 $15, $24, $39, General Cheque Acct Investment Acct TOTAL 2012 AGM PHOTOS Our Musicians and Secretary, Louise Joy Our Guest Speaker Sunny Philip 3

4 SUNNY PHILIP S ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING PRESENTATION Why Transform 4Life? Dear friends and friends of Vellore, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak once again to a group of people who are committed to making a difference not only in your sphere of influence but even beyond. I am thankful to the Friends of Vellore, Victoria executive who have given me this opportunity to share with you what I do these days in India. I represent an organization I have initiated with the help and support of a number of people both here in Australia and also in India and now in several other parts of the world. The organization I am referring to is, Transform4Life. The title of my talk this afternoon is, Why Transform4Life? The ability of India to live with and to hold in harmony several apparent antithetical worldviews at the same time without the slightest notion of incoherence or feeling of inconsistency is well known and well documented. Therefore, the cliché, India is a land of contrasts. Often when people use the phrase, India is a land of contrast, what they have in mind is, first and foremost, the ridiculous disparity of wealth - absolute luxury indiscriminately interspersed with abject poverty in any and every part of India. What is even more intriguing is the truth that those of us who inhabit the land of India are oblivious to this inequity of inequality. The second inference of the cliché would most likely be a reference to the co-habitation of absolute purity and utter filth. For example, some of the holiest places in India are often the most putrid. It is not uncommon to find holy men squatting in grime and grunge and take pride in it. Probably, one area the least associated with the cliché, India is a land of contrast, is integrity. What I am referring to here is the merging of virtue and vice, morality and immorality -indistinguishable one from the other, flowing together to an unidentified destination. Let us digress for a moment and focus on a statistic that is of no interest to anyone in particular in India today. Only one in about 70 cases of rape gets reported. This means that about 69 women get raped before one lodges an official complaint. Of the reported cases only 20 per cent are convicted. Consequently, only three out of 1,000 rapists ever get convicted. So most rapists can get away with rape. A woman gets raped every half an hour in India. For this very reason, in India, the so called Economic giant, rape is the safest crime to commit. Why am I taking the example of rape and sexual abuse? Because unlike most other forms of abuse, its impact on the victim is at least three fold in India. 1.The trauma of being abused, 2. The trauma of being silenced after the event, 3. The trauma of being shamed because you were abused. Let me tell you a story. On December 29, 1999, while returning home from work at 9.30pm, Usha Punathil was sexually assaulted by a fellow passenger in a public bus. `She spoke about her ordeal to the local news paper, `The man masturbated on my body- all over my cloths. My first reaction was to go home and clean up and pretend that nothing had happened. Instead she forced the driver to take the bus to the nearest police station. What happened to her in the bus was nothing compared to what she had to put up with until now! Why did she do it? ``It is not my prestige or my family life or my job that I have lost. What I have lost in this struggle is me -- myself. With the little courage and conviction that has left in me, I am now waging my last fight for justice,'' says Usha. ``I thought if I admit failure it would be a failure for working women at large.'' 4

5 Last night I was talking with Usha at length. She told me that after more than 13 years she is still being harassed by certain groups of people. These are not aberrations but normality and the reality of life in India today. Thom Wolf, in an exposition titled, Progress-Prone and Progress-Resistant Cultures: Worldview Issues and the Baliraja Proposal of Mahatma Phule 1, speaks of the predicament of Indian Intellectuals and well-meaning leaders. Indians left to themselves plod, even pollute. But such a situation, says Wolf, is not fate, it is not the karma of India. He goes on to speak of an alternative - Indians liftedfrom themselves. Indians lifted-from themselves, he says, persistently present a profile of development and even distinction. Left to themselves and lifted from themselves- this observation may be true about all people in all generations and in every nation. But it is more powerfully evident in India today than in most other countries of the world. Leaning on the observations of Thomas Friedman (The world is flat) and Paul Johnston (Want to Prosper, then be tolerant), Wolf says, globally successful Indians are extracted Indians, not embedded Indians. This observation has some merit. Indians are by nature not agents of change but consumers of change. We are survivors but not overcomers. We are progenitors of ideals but not practitioners of ideas. We are creative at a survival level but not at a perfection level. In reality, left to themselves, Indians are at best survivors but not builders. This is why we have come to the conclusion that extraction instead of embedding, as the answer to the present reality- India is a land of contrast. Extraction as a means of enlightenment and development is not practical. What is possible is to gradually and incrementally change those factors within the Indian culture that makes the embedded Indians habitually and by default regress rather than progress. In my speech at the Vellore dinner here a few months ago, under the title, What else is CMC? I explained how CMC has succeeded in changing the nature of the embedded India at least in one area of life- the field of health care and through that community building. Jesus in his parable of the Two Builders taught us how to distinguish between a wise builder and a foolish builder. One man dug deep and built while the other man just built on the sand. One man asked the question, Why am I building? The other did not care about such questions. He just launched into the building project. The problem is not with the sand but our inability and unwillingness to dig until we find the rock embedded in the sand. What we need is not extraction of a community or even a culture but exposing. It is bringing to light and expunging those things that are detrimental to the survival and growth of a community and installing in its place those values and systems that bring about the desired changes and development. The builders of CMC were determined to dig deep based on the conviction that true transformation is not brought about by standing outside and fighting a system that is progress resistant and growth retarded but by getting inside the system and bringing change from within. Implementing change within a community is like drinking tea or coffee (if you don t like either- just stick with water). You start at the top and you start from within. The work of Transfrom4Life is based on two similar realities. They are Windows of opportunities and spheres of influence. For everything there is a window of opportunity. And the best place to start is within one s own sphere of influence. In India, today, there are 427 registered universities with 45,000 Colleges, millions of students and hundreds of thousands of educators. This is our first window of opportunity. Our training programme, Life Skills Development for Educators began last year with this window of opportunity in mind. 1 Jotirao Govindrao Phule 5

6 The second window of opportunity is the community groaning and yearning to have their voices heard, to discover their identity as men and women created in the image of God irrespective of their caste, colour and creed and to fulfil their destiny while they are still alive on this earth rather than follow a path pre-determined by their exploiters and victimizers. Transfrom4Life address this though the Healing and Renewing programme. We believe that every victim is a potential healer. The programme is aimed at helping every victim to discover and claim that potential for their own sake and for the sake of those in their sphere of influence, including their victimizers. Earlier I told you about Usha Punathil. She is not a Christian. I am not sure if she has any faith in in any god or gods of any brand name. I have invited her to come and speak to our participants at the next Life Skills seminar on September I want her voice to be heard. I want this victim of sexual abuse, victimized not only by the perpetrator of the crime but even her own university and the Marxist party who claim to stand for the oppressed of the world, to help us understand what it means to listen to the voice of the silent victims of abuse. I want her to expose the problems of the embedded India and inspire those who care to move out of their comfort zones into community building. I want Usha to become our healer. Then and only then we will understand the true meaning of the wounded healer that prophet Isaiah foretold. Then we will know the true meaning of the Biblical saying, By His stripes we are healed. Every victim is a potential healer. FIRST VISIT UNDER THE MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING Professor Asha Abraham Head of the Department of Clinical Virology at Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore is visiting the University of Melbourne (UM) under the Memorandum of Understanding between CMC and UM. She will be at Melbourne as a Visiting Scholar between the 6th and 16th October, visit the University of Sydney (17th and 18th October), visit the University of Adelaide (22nd to 24th October) and, will attend the CMC Alumni Association of Australia meeting at Griffith, NSW (19th to 21st October). Professor Abraham leaves Australia to return to India on 25th of October During her visit, Professor Abraham will meet experts in the area of Virology to explore the possibility of setting up collaborations in this field. She will talk about her own experience to the University Faculties as well as telling the Australian CMC Alumni of her research at CMC. The Ted Gault Memorial Trust will cover the cost of her accommodation in Melbourne. PUT THIS IN YOUR DIARY NOW! The 2013 Annual Fundraising Dinner will be held on Saturday 4 May, Plan to join us! FOVV INFORMATION MATERIAL: Enquiries/orders to Louise Joy, Secretary FOVV; to fovvsecretary@gmail.com, telephone: or Mobile: FOVV President: Liz Guiver; Mobile: , fovvpresident@gmail.com FOVV Secretary: Louise Joy; Mobile: , fovvsecretary@gmail.com FOVV Joint Treasurers: John Gault & Evelyn Lehmann; Telephone: , fovvtreasurer@gmail.com; postal address: 203 View Street, Bendigo, Vic., 3550 FOVV Newsletter Editors: George & Liz Guiver; fovvnewsletter@gmail.com Australian FOV Website: 6