New Jersey, USA—The Hunger Relief Drive sponsored by Shrimad and Rajchandra Love and Care (SRLC), an NGO with special consultative status with the United Nations ECOSOC since 2020, was held in New Jersey on July 15, 2022. During this hunger drive, from the early morning thousands of volunteers came to pack a whopping 100,000 meal packages which contained oatmeal, dried apples, and flavorings. These meal packets were then sent to those suffering from the war in Ukraine.
After the morning festivities, an award ceremony took place where various individuals, especially those from the state of New Jersey, including the mayor and Ms. New Jersey who is in fact a first-generation Ukrainian descendant, received awards for their work in the community. This was followed by an introduction of the work that the SRLC is doing throughout the world. Their work focuses on three main categories: medical care, educational care and humanitarian care. In the medical care area, the NGO currently is running a multi-specialty hospital in Dharampur that offers a wide range of services with top-grade medical technology to a variety of people including providing services for free to the underprivileged. For everyone in the audience, it was inspiring to see how many areas of humanitarian work they are covering and how many lives they have touched already. The members of the organization accredit Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshbhai, the current guru and leader, for being the inspiration for the work to continue and for each one of them to live a life of giving and sharing love.
Fortunately, we were able to meet with Guru Dev personally where Dr. Taj Hamad gifted him with the memoir of Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon and another well-renowned book, World Scriptures, mentioning his desire for UPF to work together with SRLC in the near future.
The event ended with an enriching and delicious lunch made of vegetables. This organization has a religious background of Jainism where they believe that everything has a spirit, including the plants and animals. So, in order to minimize the number of “spirits” they destroy by consuming things, they only eat vegetables and avoid eating root crops which they believe have multiple spirits. Learning this, we were able to appreciate and admire not only their work but also their lifestyle.