By Chris Lewis | July 29, 2021
For the last three years, residents in Admiral’s Cove on the Southern Shore have been gathering together as a community in the name of kindness.
On Saturday, Aug. 7, Nicola Hawkins and Andy Perlis’ garden will be filled with approximately 50 people enjoying some fresh desserts and camaraderie. “Desserts in the Garden” is a fundraiser that Hawkins and Perlis have been hosting annually now to raise money for a family they met in India many years ago.
The Rajasthanian family consists of six children, including five daughters who all work hard to maintain a living in one of India’s poorest states, where the female literacy rate sits at only 58 per cent.
“Girls there are less inclined to be educated than the boys for various reasons, but these five girls are settlers and we’ve been supporting them for about six years now,” Hawkins said.
She and Perlis have spent a lot of time in India, often travelling there in the winter. It was actually where the two initially crossed paths some 35-years ago.
Since meeting the family, Hawkins and Perlis have wanted to help them obtain a better life as best they could.
“The parents were really progressive thinkers as far as equality goes, and the empowerment of girls,” Hawkins went on.
The efforts started off as Hawkins and Perlis maintaining contact with the family, but over the last three years Hawkins said it has become more of a community effort.
“People started hearing about them through us, and they wanted to come on board and help,” Hawkins said. “It’s organized by a community of people, for a community of people.”
This year the event will also see live music being played; a first for the fundraiser, but Hawkins and Perlis hope it will not be the last.
While the fundraiser’s main purpose is to support these girls in getting a post-secondary education, the pair say it has undertaken something of a second purpose in bringing the people of Admiral’s Cove together.
Although they have no monetary goal in mind, attendees give what they can and both Hawkins and Perlis describe past years as having been great successes.
Of the girls at the receiving end of this kindness are Seema and Neeraj, who are both one year away from post-secondary graduation in the field of computer science and veterinary nursing respectively. Their younger sisters, they say, are well on their way to following a similar path.
“Going back to the same part of India year after year, it became kind of like a second home to us,” Perlis said. “We met this family, and over time we got to know them very well. In India, the education system is quite different than what we are used to here. It’s a very competitive system, so it’s normal for people who hope to go to university to have what they call tutors. That’s because there are so many different tests you have to pass in order to get in, so these funds all go toward things like that. It all costs money, so we as a community have been doing what we can to support them in that.”
