00:00When the Shah family moved to Gungahlin from Perth three years ago, living near the planned
00:07BAPS Mandir was a priority, so was raising money for the temple's construction.
00:13So last year, when I was in year 11, I got two jobs.
00:18So the first one I applied to was the swim instructor at Aquatots.
00:22I was working there and donating 100% of my salary, and my tutoring teacher offered me
00:28a job at his place, and I accepted that as well.
00:31Ashish donated the bonus he received when he got a new job.
00:35That was a surplus fund for me.
00:37Me and my wife decided that we should be donating this because it will be helpful for our community.
00:44The temple tells many more tales of sacrifice.
00:47Tejas recruited a dozen people to take on commercial office cleaning contracts.
00:51We did this project for eight months.
00:54We contributed about 1800 hours into the project, and raised about $26,700 for the construction
01:03of the mandir.
01:04And this room was built from money raised by young people like Pankti, who made $6,000
01:09selling cupcakes.
01:10We started selling in front of shops in Emery and Gungahlin, which is our local.
01:16A lot of people who come by, they see young people selling the cupcakes, selling cookies.
01:21They ask us questions like, what are you doing this for?
01:24And then we give a really good answer that we have our temple building, which is like
01:29our home.
01:30The multi-million dollar temple was completed earlier this year.
01:33It was very overwhelming to see the temple finally being built, and it felt good to know
01:39that I had a part in it as well, so it felt really important to me.
01:43When I moved here, I had a bit of worry that there is no temple in Canberra, but when I
01:49heard the news that the temple is being built, and now me with my kid and my family can attend
01:54the temple every day, it's a great feeling.
01:57Money well spent on a place that connects so many in this community.
Comments