NE Brief
NECCOD Engages Its Members with Online Activities
Current Updates | NE Brief | NECARF Rep | 16-Sep-2020
Holy Mass during Lockdown with scaled down participation
With COVID-19 bringing the entire World to grinding halt, India too closeted into homes from the last week of March, 2020, with the objective of staying away from the unseen human enemy. This made life very difficult for people from the North East residing in Delhi NCR- a people used to venturing out and indulging in social activities even in the midst of busy and taxing work schedules. The prolonged lockdown, therefore, was next only to some kind of major human tragedy for them. The same was also true for the members of North East Catholic community, Delhi (NECCOD), being an organisation always known for religious and social activities as the year begins. Therefore, more than the confinements, the cancellations of various planned activities for the Calendar year 2020 added further misery, and as lockdown got extended phase by phase, chances of some members sinking into depression, particularly those living without families was looming large. The Executive committee, therefore, decided through virtual meetings to somehow engage them with online activities.
Prayer services were thus organized through Zoom/Google meet on three occasions – the first one on June 7, the second on July 5, and the third one on August 2nd. During these prayer services, members sang and prayed together besides listening to the words of God from their Chaplain, Rev, Fr. Vijay Barreto, on all the three occasions. Besides the spiritual enrichments, these prayers services brought cheers and smiles on the faces of many, and instilled confidence to many, who were otherwise feeling lonely and depressed. Encouraged by the huge positive impact such connections entailed, NECCOD decided to conduct more number of online competitions such as Singing, Bible Quiz, Painting, and Essay Writing Competitions. Some physical fitness related competitions like Push-up Competition for Men and Plank Competition for Women were also conducted online, and the response was overwhelming. It was indicative of how people were eager to connect with fellow human beings.
Thus, these simple and humble programmes and competitions organized online were like elixir to beat the lockdown blues that people were pushed into. As the lockdown conditions eased down partially, NECCOD also managed to organize Holy Mass at the Sacred Heart Cathedral on September 6, albeit on a scaled down participation, with members registering on first come first serve basis. In good times, months of September, October and November were the busiest for NECCOD, usually packed with different programmes. However, with things seemingly not so promising, it plans to keep engaging its members through many other innovative online activities in days to follow.
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