Though our Companionship has mainly been with the pastorate of Kothapallimitta, another of the "points" of Prince's "cross" diagram - the International Campaign for Dalit Human Rights -- also received a good deal of our attention. One of our youth, Jonathan Yardley, was instrumental in getting the Episcopal Church at National Convention to recognize and condemn the Dalit situation as a human rights violation of international concern. Many other St. Peter's parishioners took part in a signature campaign to bring the problem to the attention of the United Nations and the government of India. Long lists of names resulted when our college students took pages of the petition to their campuses and solicited many, many signatures.

Through the years the leadership of our Companionship at the New Jersey end has changed. When Kathy Seabrook moved to England in 2002, Fritz Rosebrook joined me (Kitty) as co-chair, and in 2005, John Roff took over the chairmanship entirely. From the beginning of the Companionship at St. Alban's, Dagi Murphy has been the chair there. Companionship business was initially conducted almost entirely by e-mail and phone among a loosely defined, self-chosen group of people, with quarterly meetings open to everyone and a twice-yearly "newsletter" mailed to the parish. The emphasis was that the Companionship wasn't the business of a committee but of the entire congregation. In 2005 we began having monthly meetings of a group of people known as the Companionship Directors. They now select Companionship projects and organize fund-raising activities where necessary.

The school project became closely tied with projects linking us person to person: Two college-aged young people (Michael Haslett and Danielle Allatta) lived in Kothapallimitta in the summer of 2004 for two months, helping teach English and providing loads of fun for the school children; a parishioner who is a professional builder and carpenter (Fritz Rosebrook) volunteered three months working on building projects for the Diocese of Madras and spent a month in Kothapallimitta; one of our grad students (Joel Lee) lived for two years in India, partly in Kothapallimitta but also working for the Campaign for Dalit Human Rights; seminarian Erika Murphy from St. Alban's spent 6 weeks at the school in the summer of 2006. Nor has the travel been only one way: In the fall of 2000, the pastor from Kothapallimitta, Rev. Jayaseelan, his wife Ramila, and their young son came to Morristown and spent six weeks living with nine different families from St. Peter's and getting to know us, and we them. That set the pattern for similar visits from Rev. Jayaseelan's successor, the Rev. Earnest, and his wife Nilopher; and from Thaines Raja, the Administrator of the school, and his wife Helen.

Other Companionship projects have been two very successful and meaningful letter and picture exchanges between our St. Peter's Sunday School children and the children of Kothapallimitta; and a less successful attempt to begin exchanges of letters between families here and in Kothapallimitta. Though most of the funds for the school construction came from grants from St. Peter's Wilks/Outreach, and a grant from the Diocese of Newark International Outreach, our fund-raising projects have included used-book sales (Caitlin Ferguson, Mike Taormina) . . . creation and sale of Christmas cards, note cards, and calendars (John Dyer) . . . collection of loose change in a sorting machine (Kitty Ferguson, Mike Taormina) . . . a concert by the St. Peter's Girls' Choir (Anne Yardley, director) . . . a dinner, show, and Chinese auction (St. Peter's Youth Group led by Danielle Allatta and Mickael Haslett) . . . a quilt auction (Marge Rice, who made the beautiful quilts herself) . . . donations honoring St. Peter's high school and college graduates (Connie Lucas) . . . sale of unusual and moving photographs taken in India (Emily Taormina, photographer) . . . sale of St. Peter's Cookbooks (Verna Farmer and the Thursday Luncheon Club) . . . a concert by the American Boys' Choir (including Nivedh Singh) at St. Alban's.