We in the Khasi Hills Ministry Team are excited that East Shore’s partnership with Unitarians in the Northeast of India will be featured at the upcoming Share the Plate event on May 5. Rev. Morgan McLean, who heads the UUA’s international partnership program will present. We will learn how the UUA is using inclusive methods to redefine our faith’s approach to international partnerships.
We also thought it would be helpful to tell East Shore’s friends and members some basic information about our partnership.
First off, who are the Khasi people? The Khasis are an indigenous people living on a high plateau between Bangladesh and Bhutan. The Khasis live in an autonomous state in India called Meghalaya with other indigenous peoples. The Khasis are related ethnically and through language to SE Asian peoples.
Why are there 10,000 Unitarians in this remote hill country of NE India? For over 140 years, there has been a thriving and growing union of Unitarian churches in the Khasi Hills. At that time, their founders created a new religion based on a mixture of traditional and progressive values. When they discovered British and American Unitarianism, they chose to call themselves Unitarian and associate with international Unitarian churches.
How did East Shore get involved in a partnership with Khasi Unitarians? In the 1990s, our emeritus minister, Rev. Dr. Leon Hopper, became a founder of the modern UUA partnership movement. He and other East Shore members traveled to visit the Khasi Unitarians. We formed a church-to-church partnership with the Unitarian churches of Kharang and Smit, a village and town, respectively.
Why does East Shore focus on education? The short answer is because we were asked to! In early visits to Kharang, the Khasis participated with us in Community Capacity Building workshops. The Church Council of our partner church in Kharang then asked East Shore to focus on education, and to help them build an English-medium primary school. Watch this 5-minute video for perspectives on why education is so important to them and the history of the Friendship Unitarian School of Kharang.
Is our Khasi Partnership still thriving? Yes, definitely! Over time we have built up an enormous amount of trust, mutual understanding, and ability to cooperate to achieve great goals together. Our relationships have never been stronger, and we are in constant communication through WhatsApp, Facebook, and regular conferences.
What are you planning for in 2024? After the May 5th Share the Plate, our focus will turn to raising funds to support seven teachers’ salaries at the Friendship School. We do this by holding a community-wide rummage sale in East Shore’s sanctuary called Trinkets and Treasures (July 19-20th). It’s a lot of fun and helps East Shore members clear out their closets! We also have a student sponsorship program for over 20 of the most economically challenged students in the village. Our East Shore sponsors have one-on-one relationships with these young students. Exciting news: East Shore’s Youth Group is starting to plan a visit to the Khasi Hills in the summer of 2025!
All of these programs are exciting and serve others. We gain so much of value from our association with the Khasi people. Please attend the May 5 service to learn about why this partnership is a precious asset to East Shore, and to provide your moral support to our hard-working ministry team.
– Doug Strombom and Barb Clagett
We give heartfelt thanks to the generous donors, to more than 40 hard-working volunteers, to East Shore’s incredibly supportive staff, and to the many shoppers who made our annual Trinkets & Treasures rummage sale the most successful ever! Together we raised more than $6,300, built community, cleared out our closets, upcycled many items and had lots of fun. New this year: the Campus Aesthetics Team pitched in with an amazing Art Swap, which raised substantial funds for the T&T sale.
The proceeds support teacher salaries at the Unitarian Friendship School, an English-medium primary school run by our partner church in Kharang, Meghalaya, NE India. This year marks the twelfth year East Shore’s has supported the Friendship School. In 2010, our Khasi Unitarian friends had identified education as the primary focus for our partnership. The Friendship School continues to do an outstanding job of qualifying village children for ongoing studies at the high school and university level.
We received praise for Trinkets & Treasures from several seasoned rummage sale shoppers for how well-organized East Shore’s sale was. We hope we built grace with the wider community, and some momentum for even greater success next year.
by Doug Strombom & Barb Clagett, Khasi Hills Ministry Team
Trinkets and Treasures is our annual church sale that benefits the Friendship School operated by our Unitarian partners in the Khasi Hills of India. East Shore’s members have always been so generous in helping us run the sale and contributing items to be sold. We’re glad to be back after two successful PartnerPalooza events during Covid!
We’ll hold the sale in the Sanctuary Building on August 3-5. August 3rd is a special members-only presale event.
We’re asking you to please step up to this challenge again during the first week of August. Here’s how you can help:
Save your stuff for the sale! We need usable clothing for all ages, sizes, and shapes, plus usable housewares, sheets, towels, dishes, sports equipment, toys, games, art, jewelry, special items and more. We won’t be selling books, large electronics, or furniture this year.
If you need to unburden yourselves of any items right now or won’t be here in August to deliver them to the Sanctuary, please contact Doug Strombom. We have a back-up plan.
Step up and volunteer! We need helpers to sort, organize, price, and sell all the donations. We’ll begin collecting items in the North Room after worship service on Sunday, July 30, through Wednesday, August 2. We’ll have volunteer job opportunities all week until the sale ends on Saturday, August 5.
This sale finances the Khasi Hills Friendship school for an entire year! Every donation counts. Thank you in advance!
You are invited to a Send-Off Event in the foyer after worship service on Sunday, March 5, to bid farewell to our East Shore members who are traveling to India and Nepal to connect with our partners in education there! We hope you will come to learn about the education-focused programs, write greeting cards to our partners, and give the travelers a hearty bon voyage. Khasi Hills Ministry Team (KHMT) will supply the coffee hour treats!
We will be traveling in late March-early April to visit two educational programs:
Khasi Hills Partners in NE India: We will renew our mutual understanding with our partners in the Friendship School and the Unitarian churches of Smit and Kharang.
ANSWER Nepal: We will be connecting with ANSWER to visit our sponsored students and the program leaders.
We are grateful to Mark Norelius, Elaine Richlie, Kathy and Alan Moritis, Barb Clagett, Vicki Roberts and Doug Strombom, for committing to these visits. We’d also like to thank those of you who considered traveling with us, but couldn’t make it this time. If anyone is interested in future opportunities to engage with partners, please contact Barb or Doug. We would be delighted to see you at our
When I contacted Rev. Darihun Khriam via WhatsApp for news of our Khasi partners, I was prepared to hear about some unanticipated joys and sorrows. But I didn’t expect her to be at Bethany Hospital in Shillong with her youngest sister Barisuk, an attorney and magistrate, awaiting word from a doctor. Barisuk and Danny’s six week old son (who as yet has no name, per Khasi tradition) had been in isolation on the “baby ward” for the past two days for diagnostic tests and treatment of a severe viral infection. Darihun was there to offer the pastoral support she also lovingly provides to congregational members who are ill or in crisis. Her middle sister Sanihun would take her place when Darihun had to leave to perform a wedding in Puriang or work at the UUNEI office later that week.
Darihun has been the primary minister for the Smit and Kharang congregations since before the turn of the century… before we knew that India has the third largest population of Unitarians of any nation. But preaching on Sundays is only a small part of all she does. As the only woman minister in the Unitarian Union of North East India (UUNEI), she is often called by other congregations in the Khasi Hills (there are more than 40) to preside at weddings, naming ceremonies, or other functions. She recently unveiled the painting honoring the retiring teachers at the Friendship School that East Shore supports. And she has spent most of the 15+ years of our partnership as the Financial Secretary of UUNEI, a role that became increasingly challenging under new Indian government regulations concerning foreign contributions.
And now, with so many volunteers forced to resign their positions, Darihun has taken on the huge responsibility of becoming the General Secretary of the UUNEI, charged with administration of all the resolutions adopted by the UUNEI Board and officers. Rev. Darihun Khriam is indeed an amazing woman, lovingly dedicated to her family and her faith. (Darihun and her husband Lambok also raised three beautiful and talented children since we’ve known her.) Let us hope and pray that she remains happy and healthy, and lets her light shine upon the nearly 10,000 Unitarians in North East India who love and respect her so much.
