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Charity

“We are born to take care of each other and for spreading love”

Atul Gahukar

Indian culture has taught us to take care of everyone by helping and supporting each other without judgment/ prejudice and status. In May 2020, our amazing Indian diaspora i.e. our Hindustani and Indian community in Netherlands walk the talk on – “We are born to take care of each other and for spreading love”
OFBJP would like to thank our Hindustani Suriname Community and Indian Community for coming forward for rendering Financial Support to Sawon Das Ji. All the money was transferred directly to his account for supporting his father’s surgery and treatment in India.

Each Indian grows up the idea of selfless service and importance of having an interest in the well-being of others as well as oneself. In many Indian religions serving other people is considered an essential devotional practice to serving God. OFBJP family thanks you all beautiful souls for coming forward to help Sawon Das Ji. A special thank you to our Hindustani Suriname Friends for keeping this rich tradition alive.

OFBJP Team had put the following post to support Sawon Das Ji: One of our fellow Indians Sawon Das Ji living in Netherlands needs urgent financial help as his father is medically serious and he is getting treatment in Fotis Anandapur Kolkata. His father has brain hemorrhage and he will be undergoing neuro surgery today morning. The cost of treatment is almost 1 lac INR per day. We request the community to come forward and donate / contribute. You can directly transfer the money to Sawon Ji’s Dutch Bank account- Name of the beneficiary: S DAS Account number : NL98 ABNA 0867 0596 80or his wife bank account in India Name of a/c holder: Debasmita Mitra. Account number : 00000035088631446IFSC code : SBIN0001796Bank name : State Bank of India, Branch name : Sodepur Branch, Kolkata. Sawon Ji plans to return to amount to the original donors if the money is not utilized. Thank you for your support in advance 🙏🙏.

Charity

OFBJP helped Dutch School by collecting old laptop/ iPad

Atul Gahukar

On 2 May 2020, three volunteers from Indian Community group came forward to support our Dutch families. This was possible due to the trust and efforts of Wethouder Ria Zijlstra from Gementee Uithoorn in the Indian Community. Ria has helped us to connect with De Vuurvogel Dutch School in Uithoorn where Ratheesh Venugopal Ji, Himanshu Suri Ji and Pratima Singh Ji have donated their laptop to Conny Morpurgo who is the Director of the Primary School. Conny has thanked the OFBJP team for this wonderful gesture of giving.
OFBJP family thanks all the members from Indian Community as they came forward to donate their devices to help our Dutch families.

Awareness

Our Role for a Democratic world

narayanparthiv9210

On 28 May 2020, OFBJP Co-Convenor Btr Naidu Ji provides his views on Democracy to Gopio Holland. His views are valuable as it provides a vital role inputs to creating a Democratic world. “Democracy puts the power in the hands of people. This means people must be educated to exercise their powers in best interest of the society and country. Democracy must be replaced by Dynasty which is hurting India. Instead of empowering the people, after independence family empowerment started across India. This gave massive rise to corruption, focused on difference to divide people, play vote bank politics, inculcate fear against anyone who raised their voice against wrong leaders etc. This damage is so deep rooted and horrific. Example – The Kashmiri pundits were forced to flee from their own motherland, Riots against Sikhs, dividing Hindu Muslims based on religion etc. People still suffer from illiteracy & poverty. This needs to change.”

Several Dutch Friends have asked us about the current state of affairs in India. OFBJP family guidance to our Dutch Friends.
1. Its unfortunate reality that people are destroying property, burning buses to demand for ” Azadi- Freedom” and demand “Equality” & ” Secularism ” which is already prevalent in India.
2. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into power it has been the ambition of one corrupt family to partner with all corrupts to continuously destroy the hard work of India’s Prime Minister by distracting them with branding him as an Hindu Extremist. We know he is focussed on eradicating corruption in all areas including illegal migration and continues to develop the nation.
3. The recent events in India has exposed the desperation of the most corrupt family of India – Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandi and Priyanka Gandhi who live in a lavish highly guarded house and get on streets for few hours to provoke the needy, use the Diversity of India to divide people, use the so called elites to be their mouth piece and abuse the students in college campus.
4. Recently the true intelligence of Bollywood Divas / Hero’s who are worshipped for their looks was exposed. OFBJP family continues to request people to remember their fundamental Duties and we strongly condemn violence and acts of destruction & hate. #WesupportPrimeMinisterNarenderModi.

Honor

Fred Van Oijen

darshanewm7933

OFBJP family wishes heartiest congratulations to Fred Van Oijen for receiving the 2020 Orde van Oranje – Nassau. An order is granted because of special contribution towards Society. Fred has worked voluntarily in his spare time, he is committed to the language development of internationals within the Amstelland Education Group and the Language School. He has set up a music learning track and a wind class so that children can learn to play a musical instrument. He is the organizer of the beach volleyball tournament, the running competitions and co-initiator / organizer of the annual indoor football tournament for all primary schools in Amstelveen. His passion for education is infectious and motivating for others. The King of Netherlands is Grand Master of the order. The Indian Community and OFBJP family is very proud of you Fred for this well deserved honor. Thank you for all your hard work, dedication and contribution.👏👏👏👏

Checklist

Be Careful of bringing Medicines From India /Abroad

ratheeshvnair

Several fellow Indians have been carrying medicines from India as it is standard practice to eat Homeopathy or Ayurveda medicines for health maintenance, increasing immunity, treating normal cough and cold etc. We all know that most of these medicines are sold without prescription in India.

OFBJP family has come across cases where Indians were carrying these medicines innocently but were caught and fined by up to 1500 euro by customs department. In one particular case a fellow Indian had to go to court to plead guilty as SBL homeopathy medicines were considered as drugs. For this he had to spend 1000 euros on a lawyer which they had to find on very short notice. The letters from court were in Dutch and hence was not fully understandable which created additional panic.

We would like to share the lessons learned from all these cases as follows:

1. The Netherlands considers homeopathy and Ayurveda medicines from India as drugs or chemicals which are not approved by default.

2. If you need to carry such medicines, you need to get prior consent from your house doctor.

3. You must have an approved letter from your house doctor to carry such medicine clearly stating what it is medicine for which treatment. This needs to be written on letter head of the house doctor. A copy of this letter should be shown to customs, if you are asked with any questions. Be mindful that as most Dutch home doctors do not have  knowledge of homeopathy and Ayurveda, they might not give such prescriptions easily.

4. Please note that Homeopathy is very popular in Germany and there are Ayurveda approved local Centre’s here in Netherlands and Europe.

Here are some feedbacks from a homeopathic practicing doctor in The Netherlands:

  • As we all know that homeopathic medicines are dispensed either by Homeopathic physician or also give by pharmacist (on prescription or over the counter) and it is also very cheap in India, we tend to buy it in large quantities. But if it is only for your dose of a month or so and you are having it on a prescription from your doctor it is ok. 
  • SBL mentioned here is an Indian company with association with it’s French counterpart, you can get alternative for that in Europe and UK. 
  • Also there are several homeopathic physicians in all over the Netherlands. You can check for your homeopathic doctor on the website of NVKH. For more information you may contact at info@expatshomeoclinic.com. 

Please create awareness on this so that no innocent fellow Indian suffers the pain of penalty, drug charges, court hearing etc. due to geographical differences in medical treatments.

Please share yours or your friend’s experiences so that everyone can benefit from it.