The PRASAD Project—

Local Family Joins A Quest To Help People Help Themselves

By Kaaren Valenta

When Louisa and Juergen Krause came to the Congregational Church’s community flea market at Fairfield Hills last Sunday, it was with the purpose of raising money for the PRASAD Project.

The PRASAD Project is an international not-for-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life of economically disadvantaged people by fostering self-reliance and honoring human dignity. PRASAD is an acronym for philanthropic, relief, altruistic service, and development.

The Krauses came to the flea market with and accumulation of household goods, from blow-up toys to books and clothing.

“It’s amazing what you collect over the years,” Juergen Krause said. “The PRASAD Project is just so tremendous that we decided to get rid of our stuff and give all the proceeds to the wonderful work that they are doing.”

With a focus on sustainable development and health care, PRASAD provides the support and resources to help people help themselves, their community, and their natural surroundings. Currently, PRASAD serves development needs of people in India, Mexico. and the United States. The PRASAD Project headquarters is in upstate New York and India, and there are incorporated PRASAD entities in Australia, France, Italy, and Spain.

Louisa Krause’s sister and brother-in-law, Michele and Thom Cayce, work for the PRASAD Project at the headquarters in Hurleyville, N.Y., and also teach meditation.

“My sister found out about the organization from a friend and eventually our whole family got involved,” Mrs Krause said.

Louisa Krause grew up in New Jersey, her husband in Germany. They met when she spent her junior year abroad at a college in Germany. “After that year, I came home, finished school, and went right back to Germany,” she said.

Juergen Krause went to work for Boehringer Ingelheim, an international pharmaceutical company, and the couple lived in Germany, except for a year that they spent in Chicago. When their children, Nadine and Nikolas, were in third and fifth grade, the Krause family won a lottery in Germany. They used part of the money to go on a nine-day family spiritual retreat to the PRASAD ashram in India. Four years ago they moved to the United States, settling in Newtown.

“Our son had been hit by a car in the spring of 1999 and suffered a traumatic brain injury,” Mrs Krause said. “We were looking for schools with good special education programs.”

Nikolas spent a year and a half at Newtown High School before graduating. He spent six months at the ashram in New York as head of the translation department, and then entered Bennington College in Vermont, receiving a Brockway Merit Award for his outstanding application. He is currently studying in China.

Nadine is now a sophomore at Mt Holyoke, where she was on the dressage team that won the nationals in April. After her exams last year, she flew to Germany to do an internship at a large breeding and riding facility, training young horses. She broke her back in a freak accident, however, and had to fly home. Because she cannot work with horses until she is completely healed, she went to the ashram in New York to spend the rest of the summer volunteering.

PRASAD’s work began in the 1960s in the Tansa region of Maharashtra, India, a rural area with a population of about 200,000. Until PRASAD introduced a mobile health care clinic into the region in the late 1970s, basic medical care for most people was physically and financially inaccessible. Over the years, as volunteers learned more about the needs of the community from the people they served, PRASAD’s initiatives expanded to include scholarships that support the education and training of many young people, and community development projects that foster self-sustainability. In addition, eye care is provided at a permanent eye clinic and at regular cataract-surgery eye camps, meals are served to children daily, and milk is delivered to children in area schools.

Since 1991, the Mobile Dental Clinic has offered free preventive and restorative care to thousands of children and adults in the Tansa region. Twenty-six local dentists volunteer to keep the dental van open on a regular basis, two or three rotating through each week.

The PRASAD Project’s incorporation in the United States in 1992 led to a period of accelerated expansion. In addition to efforts in India, PRASAD launched major programs in the United States and Mexico. In the early 90s, the need was identified for a dental program in Sullivan County in upstate New York. Due to the poor economy in the county, its rural nature, and its lack of public transportation, project coordinators decided to provide dental care through a mobile dental clinic that could visit the schools, bringing the needed care to the children. This removed the obstacles of parents not having transportation or taking time off from their jobs to bring children to their appointments. Today there continues to be no dental clinic for children in the county besides the PRASAD CDHP Mobile Dental Van.

Building on the success of the Children’s Dental Health Program in rural New York, PRASAD expanded the program to San Jose, Calif., in 2000. Eye care is the central focus of PRASAD in Mexico.

Today, PRASAD draws inspiration from Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, an internationally recognized spiritual teacher and head of the Siddha Yoga path of meditation. Her teachings of love, the universality of humankind, and respect for nature inspire PRASAD’s loving and committed service to people and the environment.

The Krause family draws its inspiration from the yogi and her teachings.

“We are just so lucky in all the things that have happened to us that we want to help the less fortunate,” Louisa Krause said. “We want to do it at a place where I know where the money is going, how it is being used. That is why we are doing whatever we can for the PRASAD Project.”

The PRASAD Project receives financial support from international donors and a range of private, corporate, and nonprofit sources. Donations may be sent to The PRASAD Project, 465 Brickman Road, Hurleyville NY 12747-5314. For more information visit the website at www.prasad.org.