Bhuj in Winter, by Brenna Nan Schneider

It's mid-December and of course I'm thinking of Christmas music and hot cider. Winter has officially arrived in Bhuj and with it came wind and chilly nights. Maybe I'm just longing for a "real" winter but I'm cold. I'm bundled up like it's 10 degrees outside and I keep feigning disbelief when I realize, once again, that it's only in the 70s.

It has been three and a half months since I arrived and during that short time I feel like I've lived three lifetimes. Things move slowly here and I can see and feel every change. I have come to appreciate in new ways small changes and both the joys and frustrations of simple living.

I realize that I'm accepting much of the world around me and I often forget what used to be "normal" to my American eyes. I'm with India every minute of the day (even when I try to steal a moment to bask in my American-ness). It's everywhere and sometimes I can't believe how incredibly lucky I am to be so immersed; other times I want to run, fast. I long for: NPR, a hot shower (I'd settle for truly clean feet), a loaf of homemade whole wheat bread, a couch, and romaine lettuce.

My project is to develop KHAMIR Craft Resource Centre's documentation cell. KHAMIR works to revitalize craft livelihoods in Kachchh, Gujarat. In Kachchh, craft has sustained 60,000 artisan families for generations and because of climate and location it remains one of the only truly sustainable future industries. The documentation cell will provide resources for local artisans and those interested in craft livelihood, heritage, and skill.

The opportunity and challenge to give shape to my colleagues' ideas has been a huge part of my first few months here. I have also been creating KHAMIR's library system, exploring marketing and PR, designing print and audio video materials, and doing research on weavers in local craft villages. I have also helped prepare for two recent exhibitions. One, New Voices, New Futures, was held at UNESCO's recent conference on sustainability and education in Ahmedabad. The exhibition featured the youngest generation of Kachchh artisans who used their craft to demonstrate personal expressions of sustainability.

My greatest teacher is my Indian roommate who is about to move back to Rajasthan after completing an internship in Bhuj. She opened my eyes to faces of India I have never seen before. I spent Diwali with her family in rural Rajasthan, learned to make roti that no longer
resemble maps of India, and came to deeper understandings of Indian culture, religion, caste, gender, and the urban/rural divide.

The past few months were full of the unexpected. The unexpected cockroach, the unexpected reincarnation of Shahrukh Khan in Om Shanti Om, the unexpected purchase of a very lavender Hero: Miss India bicycle (with a charming bell and basket), and a few unexpected and very last-minute assignments. The greatest of the unexpected is that, while looking for an opportunity to serve an Indian NGO, I found a job where I can explore interests that have previously battled for priority in my life: the development sector, design, organizational
planning, and academia. These past three months have given me not only an opportunity to explore India but to explore many ways to contribute.
-
Brenna Nan Schneider

My Experience as an AIFSCF in Himachal Pradesh, by Sarah Hine

So I was on the long bus ride from Shimla back to Palampur today (9 hrs without toilet or chai/meal breaks – read on to learn more), as opposed to the short bus ride (8 hrs WITH toilet and chai and meal breaks) and my eyes went into snapshot mode. My brain started capturing myriad images of quintessential Himachali India. It began with the salwar-clad man riding a horse-drawn cart loaded with mud bricks. Then came the cow patties drying on a stone wall as nature's fuel source to heat homes. We passed a motorbike with a woman riding "side-saddle" in back, her goldenrod scarf called a dupatta flying behind. I caught a glimpse inside a temple dedicated to Hanumant, the monkey god, who stood at the door with his brilliant red-orange coloring. On the grosser side, my fellow travelers left their own technicolors on the side of the bus owing to the winding mountainous roads. And while I'm at it, I know you're dying to hear how I survived the nine hour bus ride without toilet or meal breaks. Well, at hour 3.5 there was a traffic jam due to road construction. The driver shut off the bus and stepped outside - I saw my chance. I, too, stepped off the bus and, at a loss for toilet facilities, found an abandoned building to crouch behind. And then, the buses began to move! I rose to my feet as quickly and gracefully as possible and high-tailed it back to the bus. Desperate times call for desperate measures. On the food front, we had a 10 minute layover and I was able to grab some biscuits, fruit, etc. to tide me over. This, my friend, is Service Corps!

But just so you don't think it's all work and no play (or vice versa), I was in Shimla, the capital of my Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh (HP) to meet with people familiar with the Himachali NGO space. Sometimes the first NGO placement just doesn't work and I'm living proof of that. My original host NGO and I came to the table with differing expectations and areas of expertise that led to my current search for a replacement. I do love the mountains so and I look forward to working with a second HP-based NGO. Next time I write, I anticipate sharing exactly which NGO that will be so stay tuned.

Top 7 Surprising Things About My AIF Fellowship, by Jimmy Ossman

In the months before departing for my AIF fellowship I played out every possible challenge, obstacle, adventure, and experience that I would encounter—or so I thought. I left my life in Washington, DC and with that, my comfort zone. As I embarked on this adventure with a wide-open mind, I was prepared to take in everything, learn a lot, and be put to the test.

Despite all of my preparation and efforts to keep my expectations in check, I find myself surprised on regular basis. I’ve created a list of the top 7 things that have surprised me about coming to India as an AIF Fellow.

7) Building a life from scratch is challenging, but eye opening: You forget how easy life can be when living somewhere for a long time. For some reason I forgot that leaving home for a new adventure would also involve starting a new life from scratch. With all of the cultural differences that must be navigated through on a daily basis, it was difficult at first to establish a new routine, build local contacts, and feel at home. It’s been reassuring to discover how adaptable I am and the similarities between life in America and India.

6) AIF Fellows make great friends: I knew I wouldn’t go a year without making any friends, but I didn’t expect the group of extremely diverse fellows to bond so quickly and so closely. Before even stepping off the plane into Delhi’s airport I had a strong sense that my “fellow fellows” would be great friends and a network of support. The friendships made among fellows are no doubt, one of the best surprises.
5) Being a foreigner in my office gives me a new perspective : The work culture in India is quite different from America. Everything from scheduling meetings, to making decisions, to having lunch with coworkers can seem unusual at times. I’ve worked in international NGOs with diverse multi-cultural staffs before, but never filled the role of the foreigner. It’s a challenge adjusting to small differences, but I’m gaining invaluable insight that will make me a much better and more sensitive colleague in the future.

4) Time flies and drags: I’ve been surprised by both how quickly and how slowly time seems to move here. When I think that I’ve been in India for just over three months I’m shocked that it hasn’t been longer. At the same time, when I think of all I’ve done, learned, and seen since arriving, it feels like a lifetime worth of experiences. The real challenge is living in the moment and enjoying the time I have in this beautiful country.

3) I’m more flexible than I realized: If you asked me the first time I stepped foot in an auto rickshaw or narrowly avoided a pile of cow manure on the sidewalk if I ever thought life in India would feel “normal”, the answer would have been a very confident “No!” To my surprise, adapting to things here happens much quicker than I expected. In practically no time, the thoughts of “holy crap, this is my life” went from occurring every 10 minutes, to every few days. Now, the orderliness and excess often present in America seems foreign.

2) I’m painting a different picture of America: There are plenty of Americans living in India, particularly in Bangalore. Nearly everyone I encounter has a preconceived notion of what it means to be American, and to my surprise it has often been negative. Its nice to offer an alternative view to the many people I encounter that assume I work in the I.T. industry, make big bucks, and want nothing to do with the average Indian. The vegetable vendor I go to almost fell over when I told him that I’m here doing social work. He said, and I quote, “I thought that all Americans just wanted power and money.” I’m in no way a cultural ambassador, but I’m happy to challenge a few people’s concept of America.

1) My role at Ujjivan: It’s hard to know what kind of role you could possibly fill at your NGO before getting there. In my case, the level of responsibility and diversity of work assigned from the start pleasantly surprised me. I’m focusing on communication projects as diverse as managing press around a visit from the Dutch royal family, to researching, writing and designing communication pieces used in the field to educate our microfinance customers about our loan products.

If you’re interested in reading more about my experiences, check out my personal blog at www.heatandbeat.blogspot.com. I’m attaching a few of my favorite photos taken since coming here.

-Jimmy Ossman





































Top : Me giving a child a polio vaccine during orientation.
Center: A microfinance customer at her vegetable stand.
Bottom: Microfinance customer at free health clinic.

More Nonsense Acronyms, or, What We Do Here (MNAOWWDH) by Brian Heilman

Friends, let this post serve as an introduction both to my host NGO and to my individual fellowship project. I've been in Katna for a month and a half now, a time period which can very easily be divided into three two-week chunks. The first two weeks were what we might call "Gradually Figuring Stuff Out Time," or GFSOT for short. GFSOT was followed immediately, after the return to Katna of our organization's leader and my mentor, by "Ferociously Finishing A Bunch Of Stuff Before Durga Puja Time," or FFABOSBDPT. And we might call the third time period, which is just now finishing, "Durga Puja Holiday And Planning For The Next Eight Months Time," DPHAPFTNEMT. And given that we successfully completed the PFTNEM element of DPHAPFTNEMT, I am prepared to discuss my fellowship project in detail. But first let me introduce you to Street Survivors India and some of the discoveries I made during GFSOT.

Discoveries:

Short version (for skim-readers):
1. Street Survivors India doesn't work with street survivors.
2. Street Survivors India is like the palm of a hand, and its five main projects are the fingers.
3. It's all about the Shakti.

Long version (for lots-of-time-to-kill/eager readers):

1. Street Survivors India (SSI) doesn't work with street survivors. It isn't located on or within five kilometers of what one might call a "street," and it is even farther from the types of streets on which someone in India might need help to survive. SSI is therefore a misnomer, but it wasn't always that way. The organization started in the Motia Khan slum, very close to the New Delhi railway station. Like Sealdah in Kolkata and dozens of other examples, railway stations in urban India are dropping-off points for villagers seeking new, more economically viable existences. Slums grow on and near railway platforms because these new entrants to cities have no other place to stay. They are desperately poor places, with no physical or social infrastructure (including everything from toilets to clean drinking water to schools, clinics, etc.). SSI, for about eleven years, operated a school and night shelter in Motia Khan, until in 2002 government officials bulldozed the school and its slum neighborhood to make way for a five-star hotel and shopping mall. There was very little anyone could do to stop the demolition; the slumdwellers were, by all "official" considerations, squatting illegally. But thankfully the demolition, which put a stop to SSI's "street surviving" elements, didn't extinguish the motivation of the organization's leaders, Jugnu and Shabnam Ramaswamy.

2. Street Survivors India is like the palm of a hand, and its five main projects are the fingers. The palm links the projects and gives them unity, but the fingers do the actual work. The first and most important project, perhaps the "thumb" to stretch the metaphor, is the Jagriti Public School (JPS). The school is the main headquarters of the organization and the continuation of the educational work the Ramaswamys started in Motia Khan. After the demolition in Delhi, SSI relocated to Shabnam's family home of Katna, a place where they could purchase land (and thus be free of the nightmare of demolition) and also deliver quality English education to people without a glimpse of India's recent economic and educational progress. Jagriti, which was also the name of the Delhi school, means "awakening," and in my opinion "Jagriti" should - if paperwork and bureaucracy didn't exist - replace Street Survivors India as the official name of this organization (given Discovery #1). Anyway, JPS currently offers English-medium education up to Class Four to students from Katna and several other villages in the area. Every year, the school adds another class and will ultimately teach fourteen total classes (Nursery, Kindergarten, and Classes 1 through 12). The start-up expenses for the school came from individual donors as well as foreign governments (Japan and the Netherlands especially), but within two years it will become self-sufficient, when the students' tuition fees match and overtake the operating expenses. About two-thirds of the students pay full tuition fees (350 rupees per month - about $9.00), while the remaining one third are subsidized (both by the others' tuition fees and by donors). The subsidized students pay 50 rupees per month (about $1.25) or nothing at all.

3. It's all about the Shakti. The power. The power and the awakening both, I guess. The other four main projects of Street Survivors India are: Stree Shakti, Swyam Shakti, the Jagriti Gramin Libraries, and the Shiksha Shakti Centres. The Shiksha Shakti Centres actually don't exist yet. It is partially my responsibility to make them happen. But more on that later; I'll go chronologically here. Stree Shakti (Wife Power or Womens' Strength) provides access to justice to village women. Upon arriving in Katna and building a respected reputation, Shabnam Ramaswamy gradually became a resource for women suffering from domestic disputes. Women in Katna who were abused by their husbands or other family members previously had no outlet for their complaints other than the male-dominated and unsafe local police station (which was staffed, most likely, by their husbands' friends). And even the few cases that did make it into the infamously sluggish Indian legal system took decades to resolve. So Shabnam pestered the police until they let her sit in the police station during appointed times every week to hear women's cases. The outlet proved so popular - and necessary - that the system eventually moved to Shabnam's own porch. Since 2002, Shabnam has - as judge and jury - heard and resolved over 2,000 such domestic cases. It is my site partner Maria's project to computerize all of these court records and prepare a final report from them (and I will help a bit along the way). Yet while hearing all of these cases, it struck Shabnam that the village women needed long-term economic solutions; by becoming economic contributors to their families, she reasoned, the women would force their husbands/in-laws to respect their place in family life more fully. So she created Swyam Shakti (Power of Independence or Self-Sufficiency), a economic livelihood project for village women. The group, which has expanded now to about 1400 women, engages in traditional weaving, animal husbandry and vegetable cultivation for profit. The signature brand of the 700 traditional weavers of the group is "Katna's Kanthas," and their hand-stitched blankets and saris are now sold in bazaars in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Bangalore (as well as overseas as part of the Craftmark catalog). I will be in Delhi after Christmas to greet my mother when she arrives in India because I will be helping to sell our kanthas in a major bazaar there. That leaves the Jagriti Gramin Libraries, which are exactly what you might think they are: small libraries in ten villages ("gram" means village in Bengali, hence "gramin"). This project is funded by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and provides after-school access to books, tutoring and games to government school students in the area. This, along with what follows, is what we do here.

* * *

Now I'll move on to the afore-promised detailed account of my fellowship project, as submitted to AIF earlier this week. These best-laid-plans are almost guaranteed to be revised if not completely changed, but nonetheless the basic framework of my project follows below.

My Fellowship Project:

Short version:

1. I was the head writer on a successful $600,000 educational grant application to a major corporate foundation here in India; this grant will fund #2 and #3.
2. I will help coordinate a huge educational survey in our subdivision, and write a report based on the findings.
3. I will help prepare for and oversee the construction and staffing of the first four Shiksha Shakti Centres.

Long version:

1. I was the head writer on a successful $600,000 educational grant application to a major corporate foundation here in India; this grant will fund #2 and #3. While the idea wasn't mine, the vast majority of the writing in our 52-page grant application (which put the FF- ferociously finishing - in FFABOSBDPT) was mine, and I'm very honored by the fact that the foundation to whom we applied almost immediately accepted the proposal. We won't start receiving the grant money until the first of the next financial year (April 2008), but Shabnam has nonetheless decided to begin the project with SSI funds to be reimbursed in April. The grant will fund two major projects, and I will be a member of the administrative team for both.

2. I will help coordinate a huge educational survey in our subdivision, and write a report based on the findings. Before we can build the Shiksha Shakti Centres (SSCs - see #3), we need to assess the state of educational access and achievement throughout the five blocks of Kandi subdivision, where our organization is located. Within each block we will choose 30 villages with a population of 400 families or less, and conduct a survey in two phases. The first phase will be a basic “house listing,” intending to determine the basics of each family’s socio-economic and educational status. This will include the following pieces of information:

Personal: Names, number of members per household, age, sex
Economic: Household income, main earning members, sources of income, landholdings
Social: Ration card, Voter ID, occupation, religion and/or community
Educational: Qualifications, or degree of education claimed for all members of the household

The second phase of the survey will focus on the twenty “poorest” families in each village. We will meet again with these families, who will likely become beneficiaries of the SSCs, and add qualitative data to the quantitative figures gathered in phase one.

For the first phase of the survey, which requires interviewing some 60,000 families, we will hire 250 temporary field workers, 5 team leaders, and a team of 10 data entry workers. 125 field workers, along with the team leaders and data entry staff, will continue to the second phase of the survey. We will then analyse the data and use it to prepare a final report on educational status in our subdivision, which I will take charge in writing.

3. I will help prepare for and oversee the construction and staffing of the first four Shiksha Shakti Centres. Following the completion of our survey, our grant project will begin in full stead. The major project is the construction and first five years’ operation of ten new learning centres (two in each of the five blocks listed above) intending to serve 100 poor government students each with remedial classes, and their parents with innovative adult learning opportunities (out with the alphabet, in with wealth management and civil action). This proposal is in direct response both to our organization’s personal experiences in the region and the recent Sachar Report on the Status of Muslims in India, which specifically recommends that the government, NGO and private sector collaborate on just such “study centre” projects.

According to the latest plan, the first four centres will be built and inaugurated as soon as possible after we begin receiving funds in March or April. This will likely take until late May or early June. The next three centres will be built and inaugurated by the beginning of the following school year, which starts in April, and the final three by the next April (2010). Prior to the first inauguration, in addition to construction of the centres, we will also need to hire and train the staff of the centres, in addition to building community awareness and support of the projects through various means (traditional cycle prachar ads, meetings with major school officials, etc.). I expect to take a leading role in these preparation projects, especially the training of the teachers.

* * *

Those are the basic facts/motivations/ideas/projects that I'm planning to deal with during my time here. Of course, I am also: teaching computer classes to Class 3 and 4 students, helping Maria with her work, being the random-computer-task go-to-guy at school, taking Bangla lessons, taking Rabindrasangeet singing lessons, attending AIF retreats, playing regular cricket matches with school staff, writing this blog, growing a mustache, staying up on Indian cricket news and scores, reading like a maniac, learning Bangla songs on guitar, planning my mother-and-friends' trip to India, fighting off hordes of insects in my room, learning to cook simple Indian dishes, dancing at school programmes and staff dinner parties, and sleeping very well.

I think sleeping is the only thing I'm doing "very well" so far, but I'm working to change that. Perhaps these next two weeks will earn the title "Learning To Do Many Things Very Well At The Same Time Time," or LTDMTVWATSTT. Let's hope.

Thanks for reading.

Brian Heilman