Rev. Sudhir Sharma on poverty in his region

In response to yesterday's post about the global hunger crisis, I received a message from Rev. Sudhir Sharma.  He serves as the Director of the Centre for Studies in Rural Development and the Institute of Social Work and Research in Ahmednagar, India.  He also pastors two churches, where they are working hard to respond to the needs of the people in their community. He writes:

There is a drought in our district Ahmednagar. There is no water in some villages and no fodder for animals. Situation is difficult. In one of the churches in a village Walki, we have special prayers for the rains and also we are trying to teach to save the water and to use water properly. This village church people are poor Christians who work as labourers and very few are marginal farmers. We have concern for the poorer people who cannot buy good quality food and have to depend on public distribution system through which government provides low quality wheat. We shall submit our protest letters to the government office about this kind of food.
We shall also raise some funds for the orphanage. As our own people ofthe church are poor, we may not do much to raise funds, but we shall awaken rich community to think about the sufferings of the poor.
If possible, the Institute of Social Work and the Christ Church, Walki will start providing one time food to poor and needy people, and also would like to start project like food for work.