For Maria Yuliana Farida keeping her faith alive and fighting for her rights is now part of her daily routine.
For Gabriella Minj, a tribal Catholic mother living on the outskirts of India’s capital New Delhi, survival is a daily bur-den and hope is a luxury afford-ed only by faith.
The 44-year lives with her two teenage children and husband in a two-room house in the densely populated Khora colony in the eastern part of the city. The rooms take different shapes as a bedroom, study, sitting room, and kitchen at different times of day and night.
“We are lucky to have this place,” she said alluding to the millions of people, many of them tribal people like her from central India, who live in Delhi’s slums.
Minj comes from Chhattisgarh, which has the ignominious distinction of being India’s poorest state where around 40 percent of people live below the poverty line.
“What you see or hear, you will forget. But what you experience can never be forgotten. It will remain with you forever,” says the slightly built woman while narrating how extreme poverty forced her to migrate from her village.
She arrived in the national capital two decades ago looking for a job to support herself and her large family back home comprising 10 members. Years of hard work and strong faith have helped her develop a steely resolve to ensure a better future for her children.

“I have great faith in Mother Mary. Whenever I feel sad and lonely I pray the rosary and every time my prayers are answered,” she says.