Clothes Drive to Help Battered Women

On April 6^th 2014, a clothes drive was held by the Fort Lauderdale chapter in conjunction with the Sahara Foundation of South Florida and the Sindhi Association of South Florida. The clothes drive was held to benefit the Sahara Foundation which caters and helps battered women.

Sahara of South Florida is a Miami-based organization working to combat domestic violence in the Asian communities of South Florida, and to provide support for Asian women in distress. Sahara has provided support to victims of Domestic Violence from Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani backgrounds. Sahara is dedicated to assist domestic violence victims irrespective of their country of origin. Sahara's membership is open to both men and women.

The Fort Lauderdale chapter of Sant Nirankari Mission, joined hands with the Sindhi Association and old Indian clothes were collected from the community. About 18 large garbage bags full of ladies and men’s Indian clothes were collected from the community and delivered to the Sahara Foundation.

The Sahara Foundation then organized a booth to sell these clothes at considerably low prizes for two consecutive weekends. Our sangat members also assisted with the sales of these clothes. The funds collected from these sales were used by the Sahara Foundation to reestablish some of the battered women back into the community by helping them rent apartments, buy furniture and pay for their legal fees to fight their court cases.

The Sindhi Association assisted the Sant Nirankari Mission with the clothes drive by sending a mass email to their Association members. Their members gave a great response and a lot of their members brought the clothes to the assigned place at the assigned time.

The Sahara Foundation appreciated the Mission’s effort and said that they hope to do more projects with the Sant Nirankari Mission in the future.