AR reaches out to Home inmates with gifts
Source: Chronicle News Service / R Lester Makang

Ukhrul, January 08 2022: As the New Year comes, everyone looks for ways to start the year on a positive note.

And what better way to do that than to share feel-good New Year gifts to the less-privileged and make them happy? Well, this exactly was what the 35 Assam Rifles of Sbmsai Battalion did.

On the New Year's Day, a team consisting of some Assam Rifles officers and their families along with local friends, paid a visit to an orphanage Raphachir Home and shared with the inmates a rich variety of essential commodities and other costly goods along with cash as New Year gifts.

Caretaker of the home Wungsek Rebecca and the young boys and girls gave warm reception to the visiting team.

Happiness was gleaming on their faces as they saw a rich assortment of gifts unloaded in front of them.

The massive gifts included essential commodities like rice, sugar, peas, dal, soybean, salt, fish, cooking oil, coffee, hair oil, milk, Dettol soap, milk powder, tooth brushes and toothpaste, biscuits, chocolates, and other goods like mattresses, and cloth items.

"We are immensely thankful to the officers of 35 Assam Rifles for their humane gesture and generous gifts.

May God reward them all abundantly," Rebecca said on receiving the gifts.

She said that the Assam Rifles officers visited them during Christmas celebrations.

Interacting with media persons, Rebecca who hails from Shirui village, shared her struggles in running the home with limited resources.

She informed that the home currently has 22 inmates including 15 girls and they are all orphans and homeless.

According to Rebecca, she and the inmates do every possible manual works to make ends meet.

She informed that they cultivate their own paddy in Hungpung and in her native village to feed them.

She said that whenever they get the opportunity, they also work as labourers in construction works to earn daily wages to support them.

A Christian missionary by profession, Rebecca has been rendering voluntary service as a counsellor for youth and involved in spiritual healing for years.

She further informed that Raphachir Home has completed one year at the present location.

She said that the home started operation at the building on December 29 last year after the building owner Alek Muivah (Joint Registrar, Manipur High Court) allowed them to occupy his building to run the institute for free.

Apart from interacting with the young inmates, the visiting team also joined them in enjoying the food together which was prepared by the young inmates.

One of the AR officers told the pressmen that the motive of extending the assistance was purely humanitarian and was intended as a New Year gift for the inmates.

The Somsai Battalion took the initiative as part of its civic action programme to ease the hardships of the inmates, the officer said.

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