From Humble Beginnings to Impactful Present: Reflecting on 15 Years of Amrita-Seattle's Journey

Sharmila Pal
Jan 23
3 min read

This journey wouldn’t be possible without YOU—our incredible supporters!

In 2007, Amrita-Seattle was born out of a simple yet profound idea: Live to Serve, by Sampa Pal & Sujit Pal. It began humbly: Sampa prepared weekly hot meals at home, delivering them to shelters across King County. Meanwhile, Sujit, still living in India, dedicated his resources and skills to provide education, nutrition, and mentorship to blind and visually impaired youth from the most marginalized communities in West Bengal.

As this simple yet tremendously heart-felt individual method of philanthropy continued, Sujit and Sampa began to receive more and more community requests for support- from scholarships to textbooks, residence hall fees, and meal plans, to tuition fees. Moved by their resilience, they knew that their efforts needed to grow beyond individual action(s) to provide access to education, healthcare, and basic resources for more children and youth.

“We realized that while individual efforts made a difference, and built the human connecting, forming a community-driven organization would allow us to reach more children and youth provide them access to education, healthcare, and basic resources, for a deeper impact,” recalls Sampa Pal, Founder & Chairman of Amrita-Seattle.

And thus in February 2010, after three years of pouring in relentless individual efforts, Sujit and Sampa, formed Amrita-Seattle, as a formal non-profit organization in WA State. Amrita (Meaning, that which never dies), was built on the guiding spirit and philosophy of Live to Serve. Its mission was unique: To SIMULTANEOUSLY serve unsheltered at-risk communities in WA state, AND providing services for at-risk children, youth in rural India, for breaking the cycle of generational poverty.

Building Hope Against All Odds:

Sujit and Sampa, both had no prior non-profit management experience, development, marketing, or corporate skills. They relied solely on their passion and guiding philosophy: Live to Serve. What began as a handful of scholarships for visually impaired youth expanded into life-changing programs. Amrita-Seattle gradually broadened its mission to provide regular nutritious meals for unsheltered youth in King County, WA, while developing programs focused on education, health, nutrition, and clean water in remotest areas of West Bengal, India, like the Sunderbaans forest, Bengal-Bangladesh Borders, or deep rural interior of West Bengal. Reaching these remote areas required arduous journeys—by bus, train, 2-wheelers, and dingy boats—taking entire days to arrive.

Sujit and Sampa, now accompanied by a tremendously passionate and fiery community leader, Debala, and Sharmila (daughter), saw the dire education and health crises and challenges of children and youth. In the island forests of Sundarbans, where communities faced extreme generational poverty, regular tiger attacks, seasonal typhoons, and saltwater-inundated fields, Sujit and Sampa worked firsthand with local champions to address these cyclic series of struggles and obstacles that children are born into. The villages lacked electricity, roads, clean water, nutritious food, and basic necessities, RIP education programs. Yet amidst these challenges, the seeds of hope and transformation were planted.

Today, after 15 years, Amrita-Seattle stands as a testament to the power of compassion, dedication, and community, despite pandemics, cyclones, and floods constantly ravaging these areas.

Over the next 15 years, we became an intricate part of the social fabric. We expanded from West Bengal to other isolated parts of India, such as the Himalayas in Ladakh, and beyond. We designed and implemented daily childhood development programs and meal plans, operated 24x7 Residential Homes for at-risk unsheltered girl child and visually impaired youth; built Learning Center(s), playgrounds, Computer Labs, provided classroom furniture, executed medical camps, facilitated reproductive health workshops, single handedly led cyclone and pandemic relief efforts, and empowered students with academic scholarships.