News

News From St. Joseph’s Welfare Center

Our new Administrator since the death of Rose 2019 has been Irin Mary Seelan who was previously an assistant to Rose for 9 years before 2019. We are happy that Irin will be able to continue the work started by Fr. Joseph so many years ago. Irin Mary is 49 years old and started on January 10, 2010. She is assisted by Adrin, her son, with the IT work. She had been the Manager who took care of all St Joseph’s projects like orphanage, elders, lepers, widows, self help groups. She takes care of banking and all administrative jobs. She is now in-charge and is the liaison to the government officials. She works round the clock for the welfare of the orphanage. She is proud to carry forward the legacy handed over to her with the blessings of Fr Joseph.

Also our Board Member and Grants Coordinator, Robert Kelly, died suddenly on August 2, 2019. He was such a generous force in obtaining donors, and spreading the word about our mission. We will miss him terribly. We also will be seeking new Board members as we continue the work started by Fr. Joseph.

The Center in Vellamadam always sends a monthly report to let our donors know how their donation are being used. Below are the latest Monthly Reports:

2023 January

2023 February

2023 March

2023 April

Lynch foundation Provides $10,562 Grant for Adivasi Programs
Fr. Caesar in Assam was transferred to St. Francis of Assisi parish, Rajabari as pastor in the month of January 2022. This is one of the parishes of our Dibrugarh diocese. We have 13 Adivasi tribal villages. Our total number of Catholics are about 4000 and there are 560 catholic families. Each village is about 22 miles distance. We have a village school catering the education of our tribal people. This parish is 36 years old and too many problem to solve. The people of this parish are the Adivasi tribals who live and work in the tea plantation and in the villages. Most of them work in the tea plantation for a low wage of Rs. 205 ( 2.5 USD) per day. Some of the people work in their rice fields and many men and women travel 15 miles to work in the town area on daily basis. Thus, they are economically very poor and each family will have at least 6 to 7 members to feed.

Accordingly, he initiated several programs for the parish including Training of village lay leaders, Village retreats, Training of catechists, Family Renewal seminars, educational materials, and Children’s Programs.

The Lynch Foundation generously provided a grant in 2022 to support these programs.

SJMF Officers and Annual Meeting

Minutes of Our Annual Board Meeting for 2022 can be found here

Other Information

IRS Form 990 for the last 3 years and our 501(c)(3) ruling are linked below.

2022 Form 990

2021 Form 990

2020 Form 990

IRS Tax Exempt Ruling