Rachel Jacob is a member of St.Joseph Parish in Vijayapuram Diocese. Due to the non-payment of bank loan during the floods of 2018 Kottayam Cooperative Bank confiscated her house. Her sick husband and she lives in a rented house. They have two daughters. The eldest daughter, with her husband and two children, has been in their house since October 13th. Her daughter’s husband had an iron fall on his head while moving the rod while on duty and had bleeding inside his head. He has been with them for a month after undergoing surgery at the Medical College Hospital. Her daughter also cannot go to work as her son-in-law needs someone always as a bystander to take care of him. Again tragedy hit her family as her husband fell from the top of a three-story building during painting work in 2010. He was lying with a broken neck, waist, legs, and arms. At that time he was caught with a heart attack and Angioplasty was done. He was unable to do any work.
She has also been serving as an active political representative since 2010. Now she is a Panchayat Member ( Elected representative of the Local Self Government). At present, she is living in a rented house. She needs to spend all her income on rent, expenses, and medicines. She has found a plot of four and a half cents which she is interested in buying. She has money to buy the plot but to build the house she needs our help. At present all six of the family members are living in a rented house together. Even they have no fulfillment for foods and medicines. Being a representative of the people, she hid all her sorrows in front of the people, loved the people, and worked for their hopes, upliftment, and development of the community, meanwhile she also lost a total of 5 cents of land and house. She could not achieve anything. She is also a member of the parish committee of her parish and works in all other areas. She has been actively working in the field of women empowerment in Vijayapuram diocese since 1996.
