The W.J. Clinton Fellowship for Service in India Blog

Departure

2010-07-19T05:32:00.001-07:00

Looking down, ever down, calloused hands scout crusty soil for the sole pewli she pirouettes—a habit of anxiety belying pretenses of stoicism. We know so we smile, in these final days readily to temper the tide of our true feelings. We laugh through a last meal, a last song, a last conversation; mashed mango and kofta, Open Your Eyes, an unending commitment to the community. Feigned happiness again buries tears along this string of post-college years knotted with such punishing celebration.

This community—teachers, farmers, cooks—is family we will leave. And in the end we remember the beginning. What brings anyone to APV is misunderstood, though retrospect helps explain groggy 3:45am smiles persisting through each day’s three workdays in the classroom, kitchen, and fields.`

A pause in the flower’s twirl, a tug at the petals, a divulgence:

—When rice, I enjoy many people together. First one family work, then others come, then four, five families together. Everybody taking out and tying and joking, talking, and I like. Plowing the field and water and mix and mud and sowing again and throw mud at each other in mouth and…like Holi, I like.

Muddled mosaic tiles of memory; petals amputated, collected in her hands. Pluck…

—All children went forest together to big stone and are sitting there and eating and sitting. We talk about our home, our school. Women and brothers talk me. They know I don’t tell anybody. Some women hide and they fight and they tell me about. They tell everything. Like secret. They trust me.

…Pluck…

—I have goat and sheep. I like our cow, very nice, no horns. One day leopard attack our cow and I am crying. Evening time, leopard attack and killed. Many people go to forest not find and after two days I saw the cow dead. I am crying. Many days I am crying. My cow has no horns.

…Pluck…

The decent, the diligent, the gentle, and the wise. We are who came here, grown, intellectually and emotionally.

She balls the severed petals and from them crushes fragrance.

—These days I like so much, I learn many things because many volunteers came here. Like, you teach us everything, about other, other, other, other.

Evolution characterizes the APV experience. Investigation through mindfulness focuses life. Too often schools forget the plasticity of inquiry to pursue ordered achievement. We run a school, but we own a methodology, one that begins with introspection and may someday end with awareness and understanding.

—I learn how to live together—most important thing. Here is different places people here. We met and happy. I like home but this time I like home and here both same.

Through ease and ordeal we absorbed the best of each other, daring the other to toil alone. I have never challenged myself so exhaustively for another; every log, stone, and field was hers.

Tracing shapes in her palms, petals drop and hues erode. Her wedding is too soon, as June.

—I want marry; marry important because sometimes some problem and care each other.

Enter society, play its game. We do not reject our fall into urbanity, but balance would be nice. The world jerks us from Garhwal. Detached, we do stir for modernity’s conveniences (electricity! restaurants! ice cream!) but don’t we need so little? Naïve, we anticipate happiness, but aren’t we happy right now?

—I don’t want leave here.

She entrusts me with her sorrow. From afar we will work for APV, comfortable our relationships will tether and retrieve us. But to leave this place is to die a little and in the end all we can do is talk.

Still, things we say leave much unsaid: we are beholden to this community; without it, we would never have met, may never again.

Clouds weep the hillside, dampening her hands, smothering their perfume, shrouding what her shuddering lower lip and clutched brow tell. We mute before an impending storm. All will change—not simply intensify or diminish, but evolve. Our shared, smiling eyes might be aimed—charily—at friends; the salt of our labors may be summoned—painfully—beneath a different sun; and the synchronized, accelerating pulses as one waits for the other (the other hurrying to the one) could repeat— weakly—before our family’s embrace.

A draw from our tumbler suspends water beads from her chin that scatter what rays breaks the clouds. Evolution is perilous. I will remember forest fires, felled trees, and festivals, but those beads? Details—ends devour them and trade the salvage. In new places with new people, we will barter pine for concrete, hugs for salary, smiles for desks.

—He say ‘I can’t get leave.’ That time I not happy, very serious. Now, telling you, I am very happy. He said, ‘if I can’t get leave, what will we do?’ I said, ‘nothing, don’t worry about it, next winter. I can stay at APV for long time, no problem.’ Seriously, then; now, smiling.

She rubs the water from her chin, washing her hands. Her chin rises and eyes into mine she smiles.

—I don’t know what is future.

None do.

Charles Iannuzzi works on curriculum and syllabus development at APV School in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand.

Sixteen ten on my mind

2010-06-21T11:15:00.001-07:00

Today had been an unremarkably routine day. Nothing to write home about, as they say. Unremarkably routine day. One down. Sixteen to go. Only ten at Rishi Valley. Frightening calculations for a girl who has grown so fond of the place she’s learned to call home. The Subcontinent. Incredible India. My own Rishi Valley.

The day had started as most days in Rishi Valley do, with waking up to a screaming Bollywood alarm melody, to close the doors for a hope of privacy. A few hours later, I rubbed my eyes out of bed awoken by the intrusion into privacy, the maid in the window singing a long “Helloooooooo”, intruding into the hideously messy cocoon of my life, fit under and on top of two twin bed cots put together with thin mattresses on top.

Some time after the usual morning routine of brushing teeth and inserting contacts, walking to lunch to the hum of my iPod being overrun with outside sounds: cicadas buzzing, various birds singing various songs, tractors plowing down the road, rickshaws blaring more Bollywood tunes. Rice and dhal consumed, kofta gathered into the folds of warm soft chappati pieces placed gingerly in the mouth. A friend once told me that Bengalis have a saying, “Eating with a fork is like making love through an interpreter.” Makes perfect sense. I dread the cutlery waiting for me back home – shiny spoons and sharpened forks, the interpreters of my love for the Subcontinent. Incredible India. My own Rishi Valley.

Post lunch, heading to the office for browsing the internet, connecting with the outside world. Learning about new status updates, request of technological friendships, news of engagements and breakups, reading articles about sadness drenching our world with old wars, new conflicts, neglect, and somewhere maybe even hope. If only the world was drenched with more rain. I hope the sky turns grey. If only over the Subcontinent. Incredible India. If only the rains would come just to my own Rishi Valley.

The afternoon heat is sticky. Physically disturbing. The cool comes after five, close to six, close to dinner-time. But my room remains hot, everything, each piece of the mess under and on the cots and even the cots themselves, warm and unpleasant to the touch. It used to cool off by the time dinner was over, by the time I had finished licking the rice and sambar off of my fingers and walked in the cooler air down the road in the dark by the faint light of my cell phone, familiar sounds mixing: the tunes from the iPod, the birds still chirping, the relentless cicadas, the honking of rare motorcycles going by. But now, it does not cool off until midnight, technically the next day, ruining the post-dinner plans of comfort and productivity. I lay uncomfortably on the warmth of the sheets, swallow pain-killers for the dehydration headache, sip water mixed with Glucon D, try to read, think if I can afford a cold shower during this drought. Mostly, I am filling my head with thoughts not revolving around the numbers sixteen or ten. One month left to shudder and distract myself.

When relief flows with the wind from the screened windows, it is not immediately noticed. The air cools gradually, like water boils gradually, first becoming lukewarm, then warm, then hot, only finally bubbling. The desire to sleep floats out the window with the hot air. The cool air allows the head to think clearly, to be productive, to be comfortable, to be creative, to be alive. Fully. Even though it is technically the next day, it is time to savor the one just lived, even if unremarkably routine. After all, it is this unremarkable routine that I will miss the most. The annoying Bollywood melody. The screaming cicadas. The green of the palm trees waving as I walk by them on my way to my forced vegetarian diet. A familiar “Helloooooooo” in the window. My whole life fitting under and on top of the two twin bed cots put together with thin mattresses on top. The heat sneaking out of my room when relief quietly spills in. The Subcontinent. Incredible India. My own Rishi Valley.

Posted by Tatiana Rostovtsev

The Faces of AIDS

2010-04-09T22:34:00.001-07:00

I don’t think that I could ever forget the first faces that I associated with HIV. Like anyone else from the developed world, caricatures of wasted AIDS patients in grim, third-world wards have been consistently imprinted by news reports and pictures on checkout-counter donation boxes. I think we all realize that we become desensitized, but that still doesn’t prevent it from happening.

Even if you work for a specific health cause – HIV/AIDS, TB, parasitic infection – it’s so easy to get lost amidst the statistics and programmatic pigeonholes. Attending several WHO meetings in recent years has increasingly taught me how easy it is to become removed from the same people that you are trying to help. It’s not through any diminution of altruism that this happens – exactly the opposite. Finding a niche that needs to be filled – better development of dengue diagnostic tests, for example, or campaigning for increased training for nurses – is both natural and necessary; disaggregation of a problem is the easiest way for an individual actor to make an impact. All this being said, at the heart of the tables, graphs, and logframe outlines, there is a population that is sick. And each population is made of so many individuals. People. Stories. Lives. Faces.

Until this past month, I had become increasingly uncomfortable with this disconnect in my own life. I have written extensively about “domestic violence victims” and “HIV positive wives” during my time here – but who are they? Equally important to me – and, in the pragmatic sense, to the program as they approach potential new donors – was interacting with the patients and AIDS-affected population that YRG serves. Through the kindness of my advisor, Ganesh, and the dynamic medical director at YRG’s hospital, Dr. Kumar, they agreed to let me start attending rounds, counseling sessions, and helping with outpatient care.

So I found myself, face to face, with a family of three being counseled on HIV for the first time. As the interview was in Telugu (a regional language of Andhra Pradesh), I simply watched and tried to follow the counselor Lakshmi through her interview. The family was young: the father was 32, the mother 26, and their small boy three. I played peek-a-boo with the boy as Lakshmi went through her paperwork and preliminary questions, the young couple sitting uncomfortably erect in their chairs. The boy played with the edge of a window curtain, smiling as he sat quietly in his father’s lap.

Pausing, Lakshmi turned to hand me the carefully-creased diagnostic tests that they had brought with them that morning. Medical papers in developing countries still always cause me to pause; coming from a culture where everything is digitalized, to see people’s testing strips taped to soft, well-worn papers, diagnoses scribbled by hand, is such a powerful example of an old world adapting to the new, to the extent that’s possible.

“This is a new family at our clinic,” she explained. “All three are HIV-positive.”

I tried not to let my face show emotion as I turned toward the family. I had suspected the husband, possibly the wife- but the boy? Soft morning light falling on his face, he now slept peacefully in his father’s arms. Three years old, and already limited to a shorter life and inevitable pain. I looked at the father, seeking to vilify the face that had brought his entire family so many difficulties.

But I couldn’t. His face was not the face of a malicious womanizer, nor that defiantly poignant, hardened image of a “truck driver” or “injecting drug user.” His eyes were kind, and sad, and empty; I could not begin to imagine the guilt that he had to bear as he sat in that room, calmly discussing the death sentence that he had unwittingly given to his family. I felt such sympathy for him. Yes, he had had an extramarital affair. Yes, he hadn’t practiced safe sex, and his partner had been positive. But, in a society where it’s commonly accepted for men to have side partners – was he really so much to blame? How many things have we all done that we know haven’t been “right,” but were colloquially accepted? Coupled with an arranged marriage and likely lack of health education – how much could he be blamed, and how much of his situation was simply the unlucky product of circumstance?

As the wife wiped away silent tears, I likewise felt my heart sink for her. Caring for a positive husband and child, as well as herself….So many burdens added to the burden of who she was: a poor Indian housewife.

The family agreed to undergo further compulsory tests – tests for TB, STDs, co-infections – as per the norm at YRG. Lakshmi explained that the tests would cost at least Rs 3,000 – about $66, a fortune for a lower-income family here. This, plus travel expenses to come to Chennai for treatment, missed days of work, the diminished capacity to work as the disease took hold later….YRG significantly subsidizes costs of tests and treatment for poor patients, but even still – how would they make ends meet? The clinical and public health world vehemently demonizes patients who miss drug regimes and contribute to resistance. But, faced with the choice between food on the table and a year-long course of TB drugs that cause vomiting and severe liver complications – can you blame anyone for opting out? They have a second uninfected child – what will happen to him when all of his family members die?

None of these questions have easy answers. Some may not have answers at all. But these are the realities that people face, as well as the realities that their caregivers must mitigate. Treatment. Care. Support. Education. Livelihood improvement. Poverty reduction. All of them are niches to be filled, while not forgetting the connections that must remain between them.

As I come to the second half of my fellowship, I am beginning to better appreciate that health, and the determinants and maintenance of it, is an entire ecosystem. I recognized that public health was my passion years ago, and decided to forgo a medical degree to treat the source behind the symptoms. However, I am realizing now that I have been wearing the same focused blinders that I saw and criticized within clinical medicine. Yes, there must be a focus on prevention, but that education and infrastructural improvement must be contingent with holistic care of those affected by health problems now.

Increasingly, I have been brainstorming the foundation of my own health coalition, focused on public-private collaboration to provide preventative and curative health services in geographically isolated areas. It must connect with some market interest to be sustainable; it must be scalable; it must be simple; it must be comprehensive. It is addressing an ecosystem of needs, and likewise needs to build upon a network of symbiotic relationships. Above all, it needs to strive to find that elusive balance between treating what exists and paving the way for a healthier future.

To do this effectively, I am now weighing options to try and find the most efficient and useful graduate degree that allow me to help on an individual basis, as well as a systemic health level. I am not sure what medical avenue would be the best route - MD/MPH, NP, PA, etc. - but I am beyond grateful for the valuable insight that numerous doctors, nurses, and fellows at YRG have given me regarding each option. I’m hopeful that the path I choose will give me at least a good platform to build the core of the coalition, while recognizing that other specialties – environmental, social, business-oriented, economic – must be incorporated as well.

There are so many niches that I could fill; whichever I do, I hope that I find a balance between making large-scale change and connecting, face to face, with the people that those changes affect.

Nicole Fox is based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu with YRG Care

Do It Yourself: Curd in the Kitchen

2010-04-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

Do it yourself: Curd in the Kitchen from Kirsten Anderson on Vimeo.

Yogurt: A Public Health Service Announcement

Service work at grassroots level NGOs in India requires fit and able bodies. It can often entail spending long hours on buses without bathroom breaks, walking in the sun from village to village, eating potentially hazardous street food or unknown foods offered by a generous host, and using bathrooms without soap to wash your hands (or anyone else’s for that matter). If you are sick in bed with a fever, puking your guts out or running to the toilet every five minutes, clearly you will not be able to serve your NGO or the community you are working with. Therefore, maintaining a healthy body during the fellowship is of serious importance. The two most important ways to stay healthy, according to yours truly, a 12-year India travel veteran, are to:

1) Stay hydrated. Drink lots of clean water. It’s always good for you but is absolutely essential in the summer heat and it helps your system flush out the bad stuff. Always carry a water bottle with you.

2) Eat plenty of yogurt! Make it at home and consume a little everyday.

While water has an obvious link to maintaining general health, the need for a daily dose of yogurt probably requires a bit more explanation. Please read below for more information on the benefits of including yogurt in your diet and watch the video to find out how easy it to make at home; it simply requires a little help from a nearby aunty and spoon(ful) of starter.

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yo-gurt [yoh-gert] -noun: a custard like food made from milk curdled by the cultures of probiotic bacteria.

Top 10 benefits of making your own yogurt:

10) Probiotics, the GOOD bacteria: It helps to maintain a healthy balance of micro-organisms in your digestive system. There are hundreds of micro-organisms in your intestinal track and its important to keep them all healthy. The largest group of probiotic bacteria in the body's intestines is lactic acid bacteria, or Lactobacillus acidophilus, which is in probiotic yogurt. It’s the lactic acid that gives curd the tart/sour taste.

9) The anti-antibiotic: If you get Delhi-belly and it lasts for more than 2-3 days, you may need antibiotics to kill the infection. Unfortunately, many antibiotics actually kill the good bacteria along with the illness, causing bad bacteria in the body to multiply and resulting in even more diarrhea. If you need to take antibiotics keep your system healthy by eating an extra helping of yogurt. It’ll help replace good healthy bacteria back into the body, giving relief to the diarrhea.

8) Increase your body’s immunity: Eating probiotic natural yogurt can boost your body’s overall immunity. Not only will your intestines be healthier and more capable of fighting future infections, aids in digestion and can reduce yeast infections in women.

7) Fresh and natural: When you make your own yogurt, the milk needs to be bought fresh, there are no chemical additives or preservatives and you’ll need to make more once it goes sour. Not all store bought yogurt contains the healthy probiotics you need. If you make it at home, you know it has all the good stuff.

6) Even lactarts can enjoy: Many people have difficulty digesting milk or are lactose intolerant. However, the yogurt fermentation process actually produces an enzyme that makes digestion easier.

5) Cheap: You just need to buy the milk.

4) You’ll be the talk of the town: It’s a true sign you have adapted to your local environment, your neighbors and co-workers will be very impressed.

3) Cooling in the heat: You can keep your yogurt in the fridge for up to a week and it tastes great on those hot summer days.

2) So many uses: You can add it to your favorite fruit, put it in the mixie and you have a delicious smoothie, or if you prefer, lassi. Eat it with dahl and rice. Put it on pancakes. Eat it at the end of your South Indian thali. Make raita to eat with biriyani.

(Ladies only: don’t get disgusted, but in the case of a yeast infection, you can apply yogurt directly. It is cool and soothing, and it gets all the GOOD bacteria just where it needs to be. Google search the various ways of application.)

1) Easy. All you need is an aunty and a spoon. Watch the Do It Yourself video above to find out how you too can make yogurt at home in just a few simple steps.

Enjoy your homemade yogurt!

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Kirsten Anderson has extended her AIF fellowship at Aid India’s Eureka Child, a Tamil Nadu based education initiative working to improve the quality of education for all children across the state. Kirsten has been developing the content and printed materials for the primary English reading curriculum, Ready to Read, as well as working on the production of an educational English DVD series. She has also been making her own yogurt for 2 years and is now experimenting with kombucha.

On Serving in India

2010-03-21T03:59:00.001-07:00

With the number of young non-resident Indian (NRI) volunteers at India’s NGOs today, it seems coming to India for service work is a new rite of passage. Manju Sadarangani first came to Kutch, Gujarat to provide relief in the aftermath of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake. She has fond memories of the village boy who wanted to marry her and of the impact she made with just a laptop and a spreadsheet program. Manju was a member of the first group of fellows sent to Indian NGOs by the American India Foundation. Today, Manju is a political officer for the American Embassy in New Delhi.

The2001 Kutch earthquake proved to be a galvanizing moment for pan-Indian philanthropy. In the decade since, a steady supply of young NRIs has come to India’s NGOs to work on service projects, not necessarily in areas where they have familial or linguistic ties. Motivated by the opportunity to be a part of India’s phenomenal growth story, they are enhancing India’s vibrant civil society institutions. In the process, they are finding out a lot about identity, development and what it means to “serve.”

The NRI supply meets a demand among Indian NGOs for professional managerial skills, transparency and fundraising capacity.[1] Young NRIs help apply for funding, set up evaluation systems, and professionalize processes. Their expertise in everything from Excel to English is valued for shaping strategies and implementing programs. However, both the organization and the individual deal with the frustration of unmet expectations. Indian NGOs can struggle to effectively maximize an outsider’s skill and time, or resist change from an external source. Former volunteer Sanjana says, “I sort of got lost trying to figure out how to use my skills [at the NGO].”

NGOs are equally frustrated by the assumptions and priorities of these well-intentioned individuals. In general, they have knowledge of how things “should” work, and may not be as open to figuring out how things can and do work in the Indian context. NRIs in particular carry assumptions about India they’ve picked up in the India-in-exile of their birth. But because channels are open, learning takes place. The greatest, albeit tangential, contribution NRIs are making is enhancing NGOs capacity to utilize outsiders. For example, Seva Mandir in Udaipur hosts over 100 volunteers each year, and has a formal training program, housing and support services for volunteers.

To meet a need for structured support on both sides, fellowships and other formal exchange programs for young people from the West facilitate service opportunities in India with financial and structural support. Among the more professionally-oriented programs are the American India Foundation’s Clinton Fellowship, the Deshpande Foundatio n’s Sandbox Fellowship and the Asian Foundation for Philanthropy’s Paropkaar Volunteers program. Identity and the search for self is a motivator for many NRIs. Programs like Indicorps and the UK-based ConnectIndia have a more explicit focus on personal development through service for people of Indian origin. As former fellows and volunteers go on to work in the development sector, exchanges help launch new organizations and social ventures, bolstering India’s vibrant civil society institutions and changing attitudes towards philanthropy and volunteerism. Back at home young NRIs are also moving the diaspora’s giving to India away from financial support of religious and education causes towards strategic engagement for social and economic development.

Meghna Shah is a Clinton Fellow of the American India Foundation working on capacity-building projects for SAATH, an Ahmedabad-based NGO that creates market linkages for India’s urban and rural poor.

This posting is also available at South Asian Philanthropy Project (SAPP)

[1] “Investing in Ourselves: Giving and Fundraising in India,” Asian Development Bank, 2002.

Two-Sided Markets

2010-03-08T04:03:00.001-08:00

SAATH:

SAATH is a non-governmental organization that utilizes market-based strategies to create inclusive societies by empowering India’s urban and rural poor.

Visa:

Visa is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, banks and governments in more than 200 countries and territories.

What does that mean? Okay, if you take nothing else away from this please understand this. Visa is not a credit card company. They have absolutely no say over what your credit card limit is, what your interest rates are, or what kind of non-Visa rewards your bank gives you (However use Visa, you’ll be better off all around =)). Therefore, please, please stop asking me or any other former or current Visa employee to fix these issues for you, you will only find our answer frustrating. Instead, go find your friends at CITIBANK, BAC, or ICICI and ask them to deal with your credit card woes.

Visa is first and foremost a technology company. They use technology to support payment transactions between those who want to buy with those who want to sell. Visa gracefully capitalizes on the notion of a two-sided market, allowing it to make more than $6 Billion in revenue in 2008.

By now you are thinking, what does this have to do with SAATH…

Two Sided Markets:

As soon as I walked into the door at Visa, my mentor (Chris Sweetland) handed me a book called “Paying with Plastic.” Although the notion of two-sided markets is all around us, it wasn’t till this book that I internalized the power of the two-sided market - two or more customer groups that receive value only if all sides are actively engaged. It’s the notion of the greater good. If we collaborate we will all be better off. The issuer brings the cardholders, the acquirers bring the merchants, and Visa brings the network to be able to connect any combination of issuing and acquiring institutions.

Let me break this down less technically with the help of “Paying with Plastic” for those of you who are still like: what the heck.

This is a classic example used to explain two-sided markets, I’m just going to put my own spin on it.

Let’s rewind to 2002. You’re waiting in line to enter the “hottest” nightclub in Philly – Transit (Penn, please laugh). When you approach the door, you realize it’s free entry for ladies “AWESOME”, and $20 bucks for the gents. The club is the “network.” Men are one side of the market, and women are the other side of the market. To bring men and women together, the nightclub (network) decided to charge the men, but not the women. Why?

A nightclub is a great destination to meet the opposite sex (assuming that is what you are into). If that is the case, women for some reason are harder to come by in nightclubs, therefore to attract women, and meet the opposite sex’s demands, nightclubs offer their services (a forum for meeting others) free to one side of the market. Genius (and extremely convenient for me =))!

And there you have it: Bring the women and many men will come, and pay to come.

Two-sided SAATH:

SAATH applies the same logic, except to the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP). SAATH’s Urban Resource Center (URC) serves as a network hub, physically, instead of electronically. It connects service providers in Ahmedabad, to those who need or want it, specifically those in underprivileged communities. The URC offers more than 130 services from acquiring a ration card, to finding a driving instructor. It charges a membership fee to get users to sign up and then allows them to access all of the URCs different services (again for a fee). It helps service providers like the government, other NGOs, and private companies to access this relatively untapped market who is willing to pay for goods and services, but who currently don’t have exposure, access, trust or the knowledge to use them.

The Gap:

Currently, SAATH runs the URC on an NGO model as opposed to a social enterprise. This is where my skills (expertise?) come into play. How can the URC be revamped into a social business which still meets the needs of the bottom of the pyramid, but become self-sustainable (with a surplus) in the process?

The Solution:

Visa charges both sides of the market, why can’t SAATH? Instead of just charging the customers to be linked to services, SAATH should charge private institutions, NGOs and the government to leverage its network platform. Its ability to connect the customer to the supplier is just as or even more valuable to the service provider as it is to the customer. Therefore this linkage, and capitalizing on it, is what will help the URC be sustainable and more importantly scalable. If a service provider had to build its own center or outlet in each underprivileged community, just as if every bank had to build its own payment network, the service provider would make less progress, and so would the bank. The banks realized this in the early 70’s and formed NBI and IBANCO, the predecessors of what is now VISA Inc. SAATH realized this and formed the URCs, and now needs to capitalize on its value proposition.

The Takeaway:

If you want to reach the bottom of the pyramid, tap the URC. If you want to purchase things GO World, GO Visa.

Fun Fact:

Until Early 2008, Visa was a not-for-profit organization, which then successfully converted into a corporation with a p/e multiple of 38.9. The URC currently runs in a not-for-profit status… think of the possibilities.

Bijal Shah is based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat with SAATH. Bijal is interested in converting nonprofit’s into social enterprises, and is currently helping SAATH flip some of its signature programs into sustainable entities under the brand Anveshan Catalysts.

Something Corporate This Way Comes

2010-02-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting aspects of living in Bombay is that it puts you in a unique position to see the New India. Just walking down certain streets, looking at the plethora of mega-malls, skyscrapers, and sports-car showrooms, its easy to forget that you're still in 'developing' country. A few months back, a woman said something to me that summed up the New India perfectly. She said, "You know, India is not a poor country. There is a lot of wealth here." And its true; wealth abounds in certain areas, and with this influx of wealth, not only the Bombay skyline is changing - attitudes and priorities are changing as well, much to the benefit of the social sector.

This is a reality that has become increasingly clear to me in recent weeks, as a result of my work. Part of my job lately has been to seek out new modes of funding for my organization, which has allowed me to interact with some of the large companies and individuals that are shaping the New India. Most recently, I had the chance to meet with the head of the Indian branch of one of the worlds wealthiest and, as a result of the financial crisis, most infamous companies. This is a company whose near collapse could have brought on a global economic depression. Luckily bailout dollars have kept them comfortable - something that became immediately apparent once I saw their building.

It never ceases to amaze me some of the places you find New India tucked away in Bombay. Unless you count Bandra East, many of these large corporate buildings are interwoven into the city. My meeting was in Lower Parrel, an very densely packed area towards the city. Normally, Lower Parrel to me would signal narrow streets and small shops crowded near a series of overpasses that lead further into the city - its one of the few parts of the city that isn't littered with trees and greenery. Its a pretty grey, urban area; or atleast I thought it was. The office of this company was to be found in corporate campus in Lower Parell - an entire area blocked off for large corporation buildings. I walked through an unassuming gate located on the streets in Lower Parrel, and it was like stepping into a different world. Suddenly there was an abundance of big open space, of large metal statues and beautiful gardens, of buildings so tall you have to strain your neck just to see the top. It didn't feel like Bombay anymore, or atleast not the Bombay I had grown accustomed to. It could have been any other wealthy developed country, characterized by the same droves business suits and coffee cups. There were a few buildings in the campus, and the one I went to also housed a few other wealthy international companies like Yahoo India.

Ok, so the flashy buildings were cool, can’t deny that. Though, what was really impressive and ultimately more important was the meeting. We meandered up to the 8^th floor of the high-rise building, and were seated in a spacious air conditioned board room complete with fine oak table and big screen tv. After waiting for a few minutes, in walked the head of this company’s India branch. He had the look and stride of a man who had reached the top of the corporate ladder. I half-expected to meet the Indian Gordon Gecko – a callous, corporate goon. Instead, he was very kind and friendly. We had come to just tell him a bit about Youth Venture in the hopes that we might be able to get him. Within minutes though, it became apparent that he was not just some apathetic businessman doing his good deed for the month and humoring us with a meeting. He was knowledgeable and engaged with the social sector, and he had a sincere belief that money isn’t enough, there needs to be sustainability and partnership in the sector.

We brought Khusboo, one of our Youth Venturers, with us because she is a living, breathing example of what happens when you empower a young person. Khusboo started a venture that seeks to support young girls who live in shelters. Herself once a runaway, Khusboo noticed that young girls who live in shelters spend their whole lives there and experience little of the outside world. However, once they turn 18, they are dropped out of the shelter and left to fend for themselves. Recognizing this injustice, Khusboo now provides classes and support to help prepare these girls while they are still in the shelters.

Khusboo was asked how Youth Venture had influenced her life, and then she spoke at length about herself, her venture, and why she believes in Youth Venture. I sat back and watched this surreal scene in front me – this titan of industry leaning in and hanging onto every word of this young girl. The meeting went on, and he made it clear that he believed in the necessity of socially engaged citizenry where every person does their part.

After this meeting, I had a similar meeting further downtown with a lawyer at one of the India’s most prestigious law firms. This meeting was in Nariman Point, an even wealthier area, as affirmed by the sports car I saw revving down the street outside the office. I met with a young lawyer who works with the philanthropic team of law firm. Again, within a few minutes he surprised me by showing that he really knew his stuff. The firm has a history of engagement with the social sector in India, and he described tried to ensure that all its work had an underlying social value. He was very honest about his frustrations with the NGO sector in India – in India, NGOs have long had the reputation of being ineffective, corrupt fronts for money laundering. This is an image that has long tarnished the sector, and it colors many middle class opinions about NGOs and social work. The lawyer I was meeting with firmly believed that this needed to change, and that were certain aspects of the sector that needed to change to create true impact. He was adamant that their needed to be more transparency, clearer metrics, and greater knowledge sharing in the sector. I’m of the same opinion, and we were able to have an interesting, constructive conversation about the necessity of corporate involvement in the social sector.

What came out of these meetings was a realization that I previously believed was just hollow rhetoric. It was the realization that in this New India the corporate sector is poised and ready to become involved in the social sector. Along with the influx of wealth, many people are waking up to the need for social involvement is entering into the hearts and minds. Of course there is still apathy and egocentrism among many, but this is a step in the right direction. Given the recent climate of anger and disgust towards corporate greed and excess, this is especially refreshing and promising. There is a profound interest in private/social partnerships, and if utilized properly and responsibly, the potential is limitless. If this really is the ‘New India,’ then sign me up.

Posted by Neel Odedara

A Typical Day for a Caucasian Guy Working for an NGO in Bangalore and Other Aspects of that Caucasian Guy's Life

2010-02-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

My writing, like the way I live, is quite unorganized. To help this post make sense, I divided it into three sections: Typical Day, Working, and Living.

I will go on random rants about things so e-mail me if you are confused. I also have not taken any photos or written much while here. I used to photograph and blog a lot, but recently at my work I have been at the computer, and I try to reduce the time I am in front of technology. I will try to start writing again, but I mostly write down ideas and rants, and use the Internet to connect people and resources, from events to petitions, pledges and articles for peoples' movements (India has a lot) to causes for friends back home, so if you have anything you want to share, let me know. On to the post...

Typical Day
Every week I write to a friend back in the States who has never left the US. He asked me to describe a typical day in Bangalore, where I live and work, so here it is:
I have started to embrace a patterned life, where I eat my three meals a day and try to do what I need to do, so a typical weekday is quite consistent for me.

I wake up around 8-9ish and cycle to work. I have never seen another Caucasian person cycle in the city so I get a lot of smiles from schoolkids as I block traffic for them so we can cut across busy intersections, stares from car drivers, and laughs from auto drivers ("rickshaws"). I even had an Indian take a photo of me and a couple of people yell, "white man on cycle" so I am broadening horizons on what modes of transit Caucasian people can tackle.

On my ride to and from work I go by:

the Hockey Association: field hockey is the national sport here. The more you know...
a huge Banyan tree: a type of tree that looks like it has 100 trunks as its branches root into the ground (crazy huge) that covers a Hindu temple and a bunch of snack stores. My friend says they have to cut the branches for the ones near the streets or people will put a temple under them.
a street with a bunch of pubs/bars (Bangalore, which has about seven million people, claims to have the most bars in the world which I think can't be true as I am from Milwaukee, the beer capital of the US)
a couple of rich clubs and high-rise apartments (with slums tucked behind them in blocked off land)
a Hard Rock Cafe in an old stoned building that says "Book Society" above it from when the British were here (right next to the Bible Society), which plays horrible rock music (the Hard Rock and the Bible Society)
St. Marks: a huge church (Bangalore has many huge churches, a splattering of mosques and a temple every other block)
Cubbon Park: the largest park in the city with statues of British colonial hotshots and Gandhi, a children's playground and train that goes through the park (both of which I have been kicked out of), a gazebo for weird concerts (and Caucasianpeople to read), thousands of trees from throughout the world, a pond for loud birds, and sometimes a cow just chilling there at night, and we lock eyes in the moonlight
the new Metro, which is cutting down a lot of trees, destroying a lot of jobs, was decided upon without consulting any citizen groups, and cuts across the field where the two ultimate frisbee teams in Bangalore practice, but it is going to make Bangalore a world-class city (according to the Authorities here, all world-class cities have big metros so Bangalore needs a big Metro)!
the huge cricket stadium: the major sport here. I have never seen a girl playing, but games are always going on everywhere all day from early morning to late night.
lots and lots of traffic and pollution, but I cycle around it all and get places quicker than any car could
lots of street dogs and the occasional cow and two camels that are walked by kids on the street, but that's a rarity

The city is considered the Garden City and the Pensioner's Paradise, both names having more meaning ten years ago before all the construction and high-rises and a lot of the city's small parks where people work out (aka old people walk in circles) are disappearing, but there are still a lot of trees: palm trees, ones with purple, white and pink flowers, and huge, tall ones that hawks and falcons will land on, and bats at night.

Reflecting on what I see on my ride shows all the beauty there is in a chaotic, polluted city like Bangalore if one focuses on the positives. The central part of Bangalore is also really good at hiding poverty by concentrating slum dwellers in certain communities, and deterring people from pissing on walls (an Indian pastime and one I have taken to quite well, especially at night (it is like camping to be under the stars, moon and tree tops)) by covering the city in religious images (although people just pee on the religion they dislike) and a series of murals of kangaroos (none in India), dinosaurs and dragons and big Caucasian guys with long hair battling them (some in Southwest India), and tourist images of the state, which were painted by local city government to help with elections, and which I must admit are rather beautiful, although local artists hate their tackiness (dinosaurs almost ate Jeff Goldblum; do not call them tacky).

So after my cycle trip, I go to our office on the fourth floor of the United News of India office building. I have been working for a non-governmental organization called Janaagraha (in Hindi, it means "force of the people") for the past 4-5ish months. It is like an office in the US except this old barefoot tea lady walks around 3 times a day and gives people "chai", and power goes off often.
Janaagraha works on many urban issues, from traffic and transportation to infrastructure assessment to education and teaching schoolkids about local government to outreach and getting people to vote and get involved in local issues, such as garbage clean-up and civil defense patrols (neighborhood watch). Our office takes up an entire floor and has about 40 computers with 40 full-time employees and many interns/volunteers coming in and out. I think I remember reading that the average NGO worker stays for 6 months or so, and India with its one million plus NGOs is probably no exception. Many people at work are surfing on Facebook and random applications and things, and life often reminds me of the ingenious film Office Space.

Everyone is Indian, and they come from many different parts of India, but most of the folks are from the state of Karnataka that Bangalore is in. I hear different types of music/languages once and a while, and some of the music is really funky and cool, especially the Tamil fusion music (mixes of western and Indian and classical, hip-hop, etc.). There is one other Caucasian full-time employee, an Urban Planning student here for a year from New York, and then an Australia youth fellowship program sends people to our work every three months or so.

Indians like to have lots of meetings so people are always moving around talking to each other and scheduling more meetings. I used to go to a lot of them and that took up almost half of my day, but it was too much arguing, and we forget about actually consulting citizens and people. I understand the democratic, collective decision making is timely, but our organizational structure seems to discourage it. We aim to run like a corporation and have weekly Monday mornings where everyone reports to the group, but the floor and decision making goes to our two founders. A lot of our work seems to be for people as opposed to working with them, but we do have a lot of focus groups, and a lot of our programs do engage with citizens on the ground so I guess the engagement is mixed.
So a normal day at the office will be sitting around at the computer doing research, but sometimes we will have an event to launch one of our activities and bring in community members, government officials and such. Once and a while I also go in the field, which means going out with our outreach team to different community leaders and recruit them to get more people to vote and do different political activities.
We also get an hour lunch during the day and there a lot of places to eat around here including an Alliance Francaise, which is the French Cultural Alliance, and has a nice courtyard with lots of different colored and sized trees and butterflies and a funny hyper dog and a dying cat that sounds like a grandfather choking and couching up smoke. They have an open-air cafe and some Indian-French-Western food mix. Half of the Indians bring in their own lunch (and I help them eat it on the roof), but half go to restaurants around here, mostly quick canteens and food halls that give you a bunch of rice and meat or veggies and you pay about 20 US cents. I am learning Hindi in terms of the food names so that helps.
We also have a roof on top of our building like pretty much every building in India (and really outside of the West) where there is a guy that will bring up and sell tea. There is a neat view where we can see the top parts of the major sights of Bangalore: tips of the skyscrapers which are mini rip-offs of the ones in New York, this government building which is a rip-off of Windsor Castle (where the Queen stays in England), some churches with bright red neon signs, some mosques, and a lot of trees, plus the hawks flying over you.
I usually leave work around 6 if there is something going on but some guys will stay late using the internet, doing more work, watching a cricket game (there is some soccer but they are all British teams), but sometimes I try to go to an art museum/gallery, a cultural center, or some social or cultural event, such as a political or social discussion (for instance on public spaces or people in rural tribal areas being displaced from their lands). Generally, most of the art and discussions are bad as they are funded by large corporations so the art is about sales and the discussions are quite limited in their scope, but once and a while there is gem (I will describe some of the gems in a later post from community art shows to a slum version of Superman in "India's parallel movie universe" aka the best film I have ever seen).

I usually end up cycling home, which is nicer and downhill, and have been going to Gold's Gym, a US chain, for the past month. There are a bunch of big buff Indian trainers and they are really dorky: always hitting on the one Caucasian lady in the gym and smacking me in the butt once and a while, saying "keep it up Nikolai", so I think that will be stopping soon.

For dinner, I go out to a cheap Indian restaurant or there is a cheap Tibetan place (amazing steamed momos and soups) that I go to or I just hang with my roommates and read. It is the best food in town, and our apartment's eating habits may be funding the Tibetan community of Bangalore.

So I'd say that's a regular day here. I try to go to different cities on the weekends as there are a lot of natural and cultural sights around. We are in the middle of the country so we have the Arabian Sea to the West about fifteen hours bus ride away and the Bay of Bengal another ten hours away to the East and backwaters and coffee plantations to the South, and the rest of India with all its possibilities, contradictions, and craziness to the North.
Working
I discussed a lot of what Janaagraha does above (if you want to know more about any of their programs, let me know).

I have worked on two main projects. The first one was a training module for their electoral and civic engagement program. Janaagraha is mobilizing thousands of citizens to work on different community and governance issues, with a focus on electoral registration, get out the vote and informed choice. I worked with another Janaagraha member on designing community organizer trainings, so our volunteers could create teams, divide up roles, and plan strategies for mobilizing more community members for activities from voter registration to post-electoral social issues like cleaning up a river, the maintenance of a hospital, etc.
The training module we used was similar to trainings during labor and civil rights campaigns in the US, such as the farmers strikes in California in the 70s and the Montgomery Bus boycotts and other similar civil rights work in the 60s. The training was co-opted by the Obama campaign for their registration and get out the vote drives and was highly successful, i.e. he won and got many people to register and vote in areas that never did. The training focuses around narrative construction, or story-telling, in order to connect with other community members.
To simplify the training for the purpose of a blog, we practice telling three stories: Story of Self (why you are doing the work), Story of Us (an example of how the community or a community has been successful in this work), and Story of Now (why this work is urgent). For more readings on this, check out the new organizing institute, especially this great article on education.

My current project is creating a "democracy index", where nations try to figure out how to make their election processes better. So essentially they try to get rid of corruption and having a bunch of dead people or animals who are registered to vote. The index actually focuses more on reforming the processes of voting, such as registration and balloting, as opposed to larger structural reforms that deal with the number of political parties or campaign finance so it has a limited scope, but can be powerful in processes reform.

I also help with Communications, Outreach, Research, etc. whenever needed so there are always things to do.
Living
Upon arriving in Bangalore, another AIF fellow, April, and I stayed with a friendly young couple. We found them using the sitecouchsurfing, an amazing network where people post profiles saying that they have a couch, floor space, an extra room, etc. for a certain number of people to stay. You simply look up people by city and ask if they have space available. I cannot recommend this site enough. It's a great way to meet locals and see a new side of a city, from staying with the founder of the Icelandic version of Chipotle to the "Moroccan Bob Dylan" to a diplomat who took me to the home of the Hungarian President.

There are over 2,000 couchsurfers on the Bangalore network so I received many replies to my request for a place to "crash". For September/October in Bangalore, I stayed with two cousins from Bombay: one physicist who studied in London and the US, and a graphic designer who bought 15 packs of cigarettes to make ash trays out of cigarettes (quite beautiful designs) and is an amazing cook. He is interested in opening up his kitchen to anyone who wants to cook, and he will make a couple dishes and you can eat what you want.

I then moved in with a guy from Delhi, and we slept in the living room, while his collection of birds moved into his old bedroom. So he lets them fly in the room and their cage doors are open and they have branches and such to land on. His house has a zoo of insects outside of it. One morning I looked at some leaf ornament he had and there was this huge bee (like the size of half a hand). I looked at it for like a minute, and it didn't move so I said to myself, "Oh it's fake" and right when I thought that, it turned at me with blazing red eyes, and I ran away. I was told it was a killer bee (not to be confused with killa beez).

My current place is right behind "Jaaga Creative Common Ground" (photo below), a giant art tent with many different leveled-floors that hosts talks, dances, exhibits on art, technology, anything, etc. I live with the co-creator of Jaaga who runs an incubator for social media and technology start-ups, an American who is works at Babajob (an organization that helps low-income folks find jobs), and three Indian guys that design Facebook applications and other random technological thingy-ma-jiggers.

I think that is enough for an introduction. In my next post, I will try to self-censor less and be more critical of what I have observed and experienced in India, especially given the disempowering nature of NGOs and the obsession with the Indian "middle class" and GDP growth and development at any cost, and the myth of volunteering and donating one's way to a better society.

But until then, All The Best (don't ever watch this Bollywood film; absolutely horrible).

Posted by Nikolai Smith

Mobilising for Livelihood : Women Farmers Demand Water

2010-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

If I were to write an article, that would be the title. Which incidentally, I am supposed to be writing for my NGO. I have had nightmares about publishing this. Growing up I had no issues with the dark, just publishing.

My NGO JEEVIKA has been busy. This is a lie. We are always busy because we are a grassroots women’s rights and livelihood NGO in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal. Right now, as in February 2010, we are in the middle of a community mobilisation effort with the local Nahazari panchayat over water supply for SRI farmers and the general farmers in the area. Jeevika works in 37 villages in Bishnupur Block 1 & 2 and Mahestala. The area our campaign is located in is called Bishnupur 2, or specifically with the Nahazari Panchayat which covers 20,104 people as of 2001 Indian census. These 20,104 people are a part of 12 Gram Sangshads (or small village localities), of which many are subsistence-farmers who rely on rice as their staple food.

The irrigation canals that feed the fields have been overgrown with trees, weeds and garbage for the past 10 years and they don't have to be. If you clean them, baby Debashmita gets 5lbs fatter from the rice her parents can grow. I use hyperbole but here is an instance where the issue of food security is a largely political one, not one requiring modernization, funds, and technological fixes. Here, if the community mobilises, change will happen!

By the way, the villagers on their own locked up the Panchayat head in his office two weeks ago demanding that the money held for the past 10 years allocated for digging out the canals be released. Jeevika staff was not there.

Rather than write a long dry article with a title like "Mobilising for Livelihood…", here is a photo journal account of the incredible events taking shape in West Bengal. I hope Debashmita gets fat soon.

Nutshell

JEEVIKA started a sustainable agriculture project called SRI (Syst. of Rice Intensification http://www.sri-india.net) two years ago. It is a method of rice cultivation whose variations have been in practice for centuries but was recently packaged and scaled into a global movement. Today, it cuts 20-50% of water use, practices local seed collection, and raises the yield per plant from 2tons-per hector up to 15tons/ha. I’ll repeat that: 2t to 15t.

Jeevika has been in the community for 20 years and the same issue hampering food security consistently comes up. Folks say, "Sure we’ll try SRI, but we have no water."

Why no water?

According to villagers, the local Panchayat hasn't spent the 6-10 lakhs allocated to digging the irrigation canals, for the past 10 years.

Productivity for subsistence-farmers of the area that rely on a system of irrigation canals or khaals has gone way down. It is particularly hard on rice that is dependent on a specific amount of water for the paddy to form. Or else "cheetey-dhan" happens, or empty paddy.

WhatHaHappanWass..

After a series of community meetings with the Panchayat whose heads were consistently and conspicuously absent from, the lock-in happened in early February. This was without any JEEVIKA staff around. Long story short, rice season was gearing up and after hearing no word from the Panchayat, villagers took it on themselves to lock the head in his office after he failed to attend a community-meeting he'd during the Panchayat Mela (Festival). The villagers demanded that the cash for the canals be handed to JEEVIKA, so that the NGO could implement the digging campaign.

JEEVIKA was like, whoa, heck no.

We immediately started documenting the process and went with our community women to talk to the BDO, or Block Development Officer, the higher up from the Panchayat head. We started a petition and got nearly 300 (of the Panchayat's own constituents) and on February 5th we went to submit it as agreed:

*Though notice had been given, the BDO officer was not present

35 ladies and 5 men, all smiles on their way in to the BDO office.

Climbing the BDO office stairs.

Handing the petition over to the BDO-proxy. ~280 signatures.

The meeting begins. Proxy .. ‘Well, we can’t really do much.’

Getting the receipt for the petition submission.

Aroti-di. Look how determined they are about the canals and the absence of the BDO officer.

Okay, in between there was a veritable showdown. After getting the receipt for the petition, a few Panchayat members came down and called JEEVIKA names. These things clearly happen when emotions are high but the JEEVIKA ladies were on fire. The couple of men that were with our group were the ones placating or pulling the women and Panchayat members back. Anytime a direct action happens, the gendered lines become very stark. The Panchayat men were not going to hit a band of women, the women knew they were not going to be hit. When my NGO engages in other public actions, it is strategic that the oldest and friendliest women is sent to the police office to get permits. Strategic essentialism. Then there are spaces that require more critical dialogue to unravel like when women begin to conflate their personal histories and internalization of violence with activism. The danger is having anger or trauma be the primary motivation while reacting to police, politicians or other men that are symbolic of authority. Activism isn’t about vendettas.

Women in our community experience gendered violence in everyday life, both structural and in the form of domestic relationships. Gender and poverty act simultaneously to doubly exploit women. JEEVIKA navigates this not by making foot soldiers or setting up clashes with the state. Indoctrinating survivors of violence (which many women in the community we work with are) would be quite dangerous and manipulative. JEEVIKA holds year-long gender and patriarchy workshops along with all their programming that take a holistic approach to analyzing these dynamics at play, both as lived on the body and the more theoretical-structural level.

Dolon (in purple) reminding everyone the importance of being strategic in order to get the canals dug in tim

Dolon (in purple) reminding everyone the importance of being strategic in order to get the canals dug in time.

Babies at the BDO. / Example of an unmaintained canal or KHAAL. That's supposed to be water feeding the fields.

Results

The BDO officer was missing. His proxy and Panchayat cohorts received the petition, told us they couldn't do much, and that we should get an engineer to see the canals. Then one Panchayat member called JEEVIKA thieves. JEEVIKA women got really riled, some of them took it so personally that what resulted was a face off between lady farmers and 3 Panchayat members and the BDO-proxy.... who by the way, ended up leaving work early in an auto...

The Canals

Work has already started in terms of the canal digging and we are going to bring in an engineer indeed. Now that community pressure is at a high, they'll most likely release the rest of the money. The plan is to have the canals dug before the rice is affected.

Target, strategize, mobilize.

----- supplementary background ----

About Rice (The Context)

Rice is the staple food for subsistence farmers in the subcontinent. The SRI programme takes a lot of initial groundwork to convince (or incentivize as per other models) farmers to implement. Essentially, NGOs and environmental/livelihood groups come in and tell the farmer to stop and reverse the techniques they have been using for centuries. CENTURIES! Not just this, but to experiment with their staple crop.

JEEVIKA is a grassroots organization. It has been around for 20 years. The groundwork for the canal digging campaign began through the conversations we had with farmers about SRI. We began with community surveys to see if there was interest in the programme. Then we began our official SRI initiative through discussion with farmers (lady farmers!). Out of this grew the canal digging campaign. Once the canals are dug, both SRI as well as any farmer in our area will be able to have an incredible leg up in ensuring food security.

The following are photos of the regular SRI initiative from which the foundations for the canals digging campaign began.

Dolon (the NGO as.dir/my boss) hanging out during seed distribution

Incentivizing SRI: Seeds in the immediate market folks buy from vary in quality. One thing we do is go straight to the local seed dist. company and do some quality check ourselves. Which is why my "office/desk” has been occupied for the past 2 month. Ha.

I don’t know everyone’s name. I know a lot of people who do gender training because, well, I can add to it. SRI is something entirely different. I plug-in for strategy, documentation and MIS ect. & evidently publishing.

We were distributing seeds and filling in our "registration" and MIS (to chart the progress of the paddy ect).

I hate taking photos without being asked to in fear to reproducing the National Geographic aesthetic. These photos are screen captures from a film we are shooting documenting JEEVIKA’s SRI programme to show for rural outreach next season.

ah yes yes, potash and boron says Raticanta-da.. yes, yes

Raticanda who is fulltime staff was a farmer and Aroti-di, Chobi-di and Chandana-di are project staff and also farmers. In other words, they plant what they eat for lunch. Depending on how the KHAAL digging campaign goes, hopefully these ladies will try SRI on their plots for another year.

Nafisa Ferdous is working at Jeevika Development Society with a rural women-owned microfinance federation and SRI agriculture in West Bengal. For more information on Jeevika's activities or Nafisa's projects email her at NafisaFerdous@gmail.com

Seva Mandir

2010-02-19T07:15:00.001-08:00

I’m the kind of person that likes to be an active member of my community, wherever or for however long I find myself there. Engaging in community activities is a great way to get to know the place and the people where you live and to satisfy one’s sense of giving. My first few months at Seva Mandir had me working very long hours ensconced in collecting and crunching statistical data, so getting out and meeting my NGO neighbors in my free time also served to keep me sane.

I was surprised to find a plethora of organizations working here in Udaipur and it was not difficult to find a number of activities and projects to sink my free-time teeth into.

Feasting Ethically

In late November I had the privilege of participating in an Ethical Feast. Organized by a collective of local “back to the land” focused NGOs, the week-long series of events were centered on a celebration of local food traditions and an open investigation of food security. Limited by my work schedule, I was only able to join one of the week’s many events: an evening of feasting on traditional foods that were both grown exclusively within the host village, as well as prepared by village cooks.

The event opened with a special puja honoring the intention of the event and all those that made the meal possible (the local organizers, volunteers, farmers, and cooks) while blessing the coming year’s harvest. By night’s end, close to 600 people had strolled through the huge tent to eat a delicious meal, (prepared in enormous pit-fired pots and served on traditional leaf plates), and to enjoy a cultural program of play-acting, singing, and dancing. Those of us lucky enough to have beds under the tent that night were serenaded through the night by the spiritually musical expressions of the area’s sadhus.

The following day was packed with visits to a local organic farm, an organic farming education center, a local potter, lunch with Jhadol’s Maharana (former king of the region), and a gorgeous sunset at a newly built eco-tourism resort.

Creative Activism

Just down the street from my office and home is one of my favorite development organizations, Shikshantar, ‘The People’s Institute for Rethinking Education and Development’. Refusing to call themselves an NGO, Shikshantar is a collective of highly-motivated people from all walks of life who work together on a number of interesting projects. Together they focus on living simply; reducing and recycling waste; supporting local food systems and encouraging the production of traditional foods; healthy eating; alternative energy and transportation; and the like – all through a highly-participatory, bottom-up approach. The first time I met their Coordinator / Co-Founder (he would never give himself the title of ‘Director’ and likely prefers just to be called a Learning Activist), Manish Jain, he explained to me that Shikshantar only works on projects that people are interested in starting and running themselves, meaning that most of their work is essentially requested of them by the community rather than the organization identifying needs and consequently initiating projects.

Over the last five months, I have joined the folks at Shikshantar in a number of projects and events, most notably:

A bicycle rally to raise awareness and interest in using bicycling as a more environmentally, healthy means of transportation: close to 100 of us biked around the city, stopping traffic every so often for street performances messaging the environment and healthy living alternatives.

A Green Theatre Festival: a week-long series of environmentally-focused performances of theatre, dance, music, and poetry held in 4 different residential neighborhoods throughout Udaipur. Good friends and fellow Seva volunteers even wrote and performed a half-Hindi/English song about their love and admiration for Mother Nature – they were a real hit with the kids!

Various speakers: Sadly, upon my arrival to town I had just missed Helena Norberg-Hodge, Founder and Director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture whose best known, perhaps, for her work in Ladakh. I was, however, able to meet and interact with the L.A.-based Dervaes Family of the Homegrown Revolution fame; and the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, Zenobia Barlow.
And a few thought-provoking films: The Story of Stuff and Addicted to Plastic.

Dog Whispering

Like much of India, there is no shortage of street dogs in Udaipur – many of which have become my friends. This, as you can possibly imagine, comes at the unabashed shock and amusement of many a neighbor and passer-by. The crowd was especially large the day that I stopped in the street to love one of my (many) favorites who feeds on the community dumpster down my street. I had been energetically petting her when a motion in my periphery lifted my eyes in time to see not only 4 stranger dogs approaching for their turn, but also one of the dumpster cows! It never ceases to amaze me when dogs I have never met before come lovingly running up to me, somehow intuitively knowing that I’m just that kind of girl.

It didn’t take the animal lover in me long to hear about Animal Aid Unlimited, a much-needed animal hospital and shelter on the outskirts of Udaipur. The 8-year organization was started by two foreigners and is now operated by both Indians and foreigners, professionals and volunteers. It serves as the only such facility in a dense urban area with a severely-lacking garbage collection system, the ubiquitous cultural tolerance of street animals, and therefore a high ownerless animal population. Animal Aid’s purpose is to “both bring relief to suffering animals, and to awaken compassion among people” and they are refuge and healers to street dogs with any number of ailments, mistreated or injured donkeys, and cows, most of which suffer the gastro-effects of plastic-laced dumpster dining.

My first visit to Animal Aid’s facility was on the back of my motorcycle, carrying one of our street dogs who had turned up with a seemingly-overnight severe attack of mange (a disease caused by parasitic mites who eat away their host’s skin). We were able to find a space for him in the mange pens and after a few weeks of fabulous care, including mange shots and healthy meals, he happily returned home well on his way to recovery and clearly appreciative of being given the chance at survival.

During one of my visits, I had occasion to strike up a conversation with Julie, a Canadian volunteer of three years. The facility had decided to help their recent budget crunch by growing fields of high-nutrient grass for their donkeys and cows. Julie and her husband were disturbed to see the flood irrigation method in use by the facilities manager and thought there must be a better, more water-conscious method available. I was able to connect them with staff of our Natural Resources Development Unit of Seva Mandir (the unit in which I am based) who is now working with them to create a drip-irrigation plan that includes applying for federal assistance to offset some of the upfront costs. Considering the recent financial struggles of the organization, this is a welcomed, exciting relief.

That being said, if you happen to be an animal lover like me and are looking for a good, effective place to put up some good ‘ole tax deductible dollars (rupees, or any other currency of your choice) towards a reputable and effective organization – consider Animal Aid. I am extraordinarily impressed with their facility, care, and scope. You can be assured that your money will be put to excellent use and many an animal life would be saved. Thanks!

Jenny Becksted is based in Udaipur (Rajasthan) with Seva Mandir's Natural Resources Development Unit. As her role in a research project looking at the status and use of Common Lands in Rajasthan is currently on hold, she is excited to get back into clean water projects. She will also begin delving into the world of applied alternative energy technologies.

Spare Some Change

2010-02-01T07:17:00.001-08:00

When my grandmother tells me stories about her life, she reiterates: "The biggest curse is to live in a time of change." I've always understood my grandmother's aversion to change as a product of her always-changing life: she has survived the times of Hitler and Stalin, from failing Five Year Plans to Yeltsin's inappropriate antics to Putin's economical victories at the expense of civil rights. My life, too, has not been stagnant: the fall of Communism, the trans-Atlantic move to America, my life in Texas and Chicago, and the fifteen pages of entry and departure stamps in my passport all point to an inconstant existence. Yet for me, change has always meant progress.

Transplanted from one of our city’s most prestigious lyceums in Russia to a school deemed “academically unacceptable” by the state of Texas, differences in educational systems were highlighted for me since childhood. During my undergraduate career, I explored the schools and administrative policies in Chicago, Texas, Ghana, and post-Soviet Russia. All had worked to battle the same problems: of gender bias, curricula choices, teacher quality, funding – in isolation. To me, it has always been strange that educators are so reluctant to learn from each other. As India was amidst many fascinating reforms and processes of decentralization in education, I decided to welcome another change in my life and set off for the subcontinent.

When I arrived at the Rishi Valley Institute of Educational Resources (RIVER) in rural Andhra Pradesh, I expected a challenging and stimulating work environment. Being used to the fact that traditional educational methods have not been radically renewed in hundreds of years, despite the constant rhetoric of reform, I had no expectations of seeing a paradigm shift in the world of education. However, unlike my grandmother, the Raos, a power-couple who invented the innovative multi-grade multi-level methodology used by RIVER, as well as who currently run the organization, strove for change. They saw around them under-appreciated land, frightened and apathetic students, and teachers lacking the tools to be effective in the classroom. And they dedicated their lives to change this reality.

The multi-grade multi-level (MGML) methodology fostered by RIVER is complex and multi-faceted. It is a student-centered model, where children can learn at their own pace. To describe it simply, each village school (RIVER runs 12 satellite schools) is established by the rural community to house around 40 children in grades one through five. All are taught by a single teacher in a one-room school. Currently, there are three subjects taught: Telugu, maths, and environmental science. The curriculum is structured around a single “learning ladder” made up of many steps. A collection of steps make up a “milestone,” each with its own learning objective. Each step, denoted by a logo (for example, “rabbit”) and a number, matches up with an activity laid out on an “activity card” which can be easily found by the corresponding logo and number. Students find their place on the ladder, locate the corresponding card, and quickly get to work. The classroom is filled with happy, interested students, and the teacher spends her/his time on facilitating the learning of all students.

There are many nuances to the methodology. There is grouping and activity type; there is high community involvement, women’s empowerment, adult literacy, a health care component, land reforestation, and local arts, just to name a few. It is a true paradigm shift in the classroom, and it has great potential. Furthermore, the Institute is a proponent of collaboration in education and readily trains teachers and policy-makers from all over the world to trans-create MGML into their own local contexts and languages. The beauty of the program is that while the methodology gets exported, the content stays local, as each party adopting the program designs their own lesson plans to be immediately relevant to the students’ surroundings. Currently, over 16 Indian states, as well as Nepal, Germany, and Ethiopia, use RIVER’s methodology.

Yet, change doesn’t stop there. Each year, RIVER asks teachers to re-evaluate the curriculum to ensure that all cards are relevant to the children’s learning. The Institute takes tips from other states and nations using the methodology to improve best practices. Another big transformation to take place next year is the addition of English as a Second Language classes in RIVER schools. Thus, my ten months in India are spent assisting in the creation of materials to teach English to third and fourth grade children using MGML methodology. The journey hasn’t been easy. But, then again, change never is. We have struggled with vowel sounds, timing, teacher training, and thousands of other minute details. But we have also learned so much: about just how much our students can do despite the nonsensical structure of the English alphabet, about how fast our teachers can learn despite their already heavy workload, and about how passionate we all are to bring a much-needed change to education despite all the obstacles that stand in our way.

In my short four and some months at Rishi Valley, I have learned much about myself. I have gained a number of fantastic friendships that will last for years to come. And I have decided that when I grow old and share stories with my grandchildren, I will never fear the transformations in life. Instead, I'd like to point to the history books and say, “See how much has changed? See how far we’ve come? I was a part of that.”

All of the rural students marching in a procession for Sports Day.

Some girls from our satellite schools enjoying Pongal celebrations.

Children dancing for Sports Day Opening Ceremony.

Posted by Tatiana Rostovtseva

Development: progression of human societies

2010-01-25T02:15:00.001-08:00

What are we working towards?

What is development? Starting from the time I began working with marginalized populations and now further amplified with each and everyday’s awakening to the majestic snow covered Himalayan peaks, this question has been an ever present discourse of enormous proportion for me. I suppose at the present moment I would explain “Development” as: An umbrella term widely used to describe efforts toward the progress of human societies inclusive of advances in the expansion of land, technology, business, international relations, sustainability, and aid to disenfranchised communities with a sector comprised of varied institutions and organizations ranging from NGO’s to Banks (both state and private) to Governments.

Efforts towards building clinics, treating illnesses, fixing roads, providing microfinance schemes, distributing technology, creating jobs, constructing schools, etc are often individually tossed under the general classification of development work for impovered populations.

But is this enough?

Is it enough to build a HIV testing facility for Female Sex Workers without raising awareness about the prevention and transmission of the virus, or without providing guidance for job security once their ability to be involved in the “flesh trade” has expired, or without providing legal action for those illegally trafficked against their will? Even if a clinic exits with extended services and care i.e. legal protection, self help groups, condom distribution, sex education, etc, will this be able to protect these women from the structural violence or a system of inequalities that prevent social equity and access to available resources and ultimately their survival? Although, collectively these efforts aid in the livelihoods of underserved communities, what is actual development within the communities and target populations that our programs operate?

I have continued to learn through my work in India that in the context of serving the poor, to refer to development as a growth in the size of a community or a simple increase of financial gains within a target population would not be correct, though these are often presented as solid examples of a development within society. It has become clear to me that development should be looked at as increases in strength, capacity, and complexity within a community. It is social change, where a community becomes more complex, adding institutions, increasing its collective power, and changing qualitatively in its organization.

Lavina Shahani is working in Uttarakhand on a Targeted HIV Intervention for Female Sex Workers with KAGAS, a rural livelihoods NGO.

Garhwali Morning

2010-01-07T19:30:00.000-08:00

Before the first adhan or alarm, you wake. Even the warmest blood cowers from this cold, but Sirius paces the Greater Dog along the horizon, invigorating. Shuffling feet interrupt the December silence until ten settle as statues in AnandJi's room. He is your mentor and he opens meditation:

“Watch your thoughts.”

Thoughts: they shroud the will, burden concentration. Your mind already strays.

"Sit relaxed, in any comfortable posture. Your body is straight but relaxed."

After meditation, everyone gathers to study and socialize, blanketed and shawled. You will join the bundled litter, comfortable in company, together.

"Feel the weight of your body on the ground. Feel your whole body like a baby sitting in the lap of mother Earth."

Within your closed eyelids, the sun beckons below the eastern peaks as a crackle of kindling lures all to the kitchen. Mansura plucks radish, spinach, and cilantro from the fields; Jyoti bathes them in runoff from the melting snows; Shanti tosses them in a wok; Garima douses them in masala. Children deliver fresh buffalo milk and to boil it, AnandJi hews a trunk that days ago you trekked to fell.

"Sit like a rock, rooted and immovable."

A bell rings hollow—school. Teachers spring down the stone path as students climb from the villages. Everyone races the second bell and the start of mindfulness exercises, first standing outdoors then inside, seated. Rigid, teachers model proper posture, essential against those furtively scanning the room. Teachers join APV to evolve through mindfulness; oxymoronically, their introspection is always displayed for the students. After meditation, the tabla bag unzips launching a frenzy. Singing, swaying, and drumming dominate the assembly before kids run to their classes.

"You can feel your breath. Now see how many parts of the body can you feel at the same time."

Teachers animate an enthusiasm for learning through practical experiences. To study botany students go to the plants. Churning in ascent, toes shed stinging wind, frosted rocks, errant branches. Students, jellybean-capped with mismatched mittens, chatter despite heaving lungs. Atop the ridge lies a grassy field, icy peaks of the Chinese border visible to the east. The life cycle and health benefits of rose hips are today's lesson. The class submerges beside you in the thicket, thorns bloodying skin and tearing clothes. Curiosity counters pain, and you return bearing both fruit and dialogue. Questions about plant structure, function, and utility will dominate the week.

"Be as effortless as possible. You are just observing what is taking place. The body is sitting effortlessly. You are just a witness."

In the afternoon you observe the longest-tenured teacher, Jaya, direct a classroom of the impoverished, malnourished, at-risk, and orphaned. Colored beads and dramatization engage fractions through sharing; students count, divide, trade, and donate their beads within the framework of a mock village dispute. Attentions lapse but Jaya, with deftness belying the task's complexity, reclaims them quickly: “Close your eyes, sit, watch your breath.” The students meditate. When eyes reopen the lesson continues, focus regained.

“To live innocently is to live without the boundary of ego; to live without ego is to live in harmony with the whole.”

After school hours begin in the kitchen. To absorb the recipes, you help daily despite a faculty rotation. Less satisfying tasks—chopping onions, peeling garlic—are often yours, but you work faithfully to absorb the atmosphere as well. After a Vedic chant, the scrum called dinner, and the necessary cleaning, everyone scurries to the fire. Insufficient electricity barely ignites the filaments, so tonight your English lesson devolves into candlelit storytelling.

“And now, in the end, let us pray for the well-being of all creatures: May all creatures move from darkness to light.”

You do pray, for the sustenance of the community and the happiness of the children. You pray for growth, both for yourself and the philosophy so that others might too grow. You pray for those surrounding statues, a family whose loves you reciprocate, a family who shares both the brutal trials and exhilarating joys that fall daily in Garhwal.

Another session lost in thoughts, never-ending. Still, they have broken a smile, invisible in the unlit room.

“Open your eyes now.”

Flex the ankles, stretch the legs, roll the neck.

“Turn on the light.”

The statues shudder as shawls unravel and the room empties. You close your eyes, inhale gently, exhale vigorously, and enjoy your first clear moment of the morning. It is 4:30am; a day, already begun, begins.

Charles Iannuzzi works on curriculum and syllabus development at APV School in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand.

Chennai

2010-01-05T08:25:00.001-08:00

It all started by running in heels.

I spent my first few days in Chennai horrified by the danger in which adolescent boys and young men put themselves \to catch a bus! They run along-side a moving bus, grab hold of the door frame, and are air borne for several seconds before landing on the bus and scrambling to make way for the fellows behind them about to do the same. Internally, I promised myself never to take such a risk. I valued my life and the possibility of being trampled by traffic was less than enticing..

Chennai, day 4: Nicole and I left Spencer's Mall exhausted after a long day at work and exploring the city. Just a little longer, I tell my aching back as we shuffle down the long bus platform. There it is, bus 23C. In 20 yards I can put this bag down. Suddenly, the bus started to leave.

NO!!

We were going to catch this bus. Nicole immediately understood my determination and ran ahead to the bus’s rear entry. Run run run. Grab. Leap - SUCCESS! A glance to the back of the bus showed that Nicole had also made the jump successfully. OMG, I had actually boarded a moving bus…in heels.

Since that first welcome, the bus has become my faithful companion, never failing to offer a small adventure or insight into the minor miracles of South Indian life.

For example:

o The miracle of buying bus tickets: Remember Telephone? Kids play at birthday parties, sitting in a circle and pass around a secret message. The game is successful if the message is the same at the end as it was in the beginning. Indian bus passengers play this game daily.. When the bus is too crowded for the conductor to walk down the aisle and collect fare, which is often, bus patrons pass each others’ bus fare down to the conductor and simultaneously “telephone” the corresponding passenger’s destination. The appropriate ticket and any change is passed back accordingly – sometimes through forty hands, to its owner. No one steals, no one cheats – and no one says thank you. It seems that one’s participation in this act is regarded as a duty, not as a favor, and therefore, since you would and most likely will do the same for the other person at some point this month, thanking them is unnecessary.

o The miracle of honesty: This sense of trust and duty also applies to baggage. If all the seats are taken on a bus, you should hand your bag to the nearest seated aunty to hold for you until you get off or get a seat. Otherwise, your bag takes up valuable standing space. You can have a lap top, an ipod, and a hefty chunk of change in your wallet, and you may rest assured that it will all still be there when you take your bag back.

o Poo is the best remedy for a sweaty, smelly bus. South Indian women put "poo" or flowers in their hair. Jasmine is most common, but roses and a yellow flower called manjal kanakambarum (no idea what that is in English – it might be related to marigolds?) are also used. And they smell AWESOME.

o Chennai to the rescue: The Tamilian sense of community is especially evident when things go wrong. One day the bus flew over a speed bump, rendering us airborne for several seconds. The - rather large - aunty sitting next to me hurt her chest on the chair back in front of her on the way down. Instantly, my half the bus - about 50-70 people - was involved in either trying to help this woman, screaming at the conductor for the driver's recklessness, or trying to keep the commotion from getting out-of-hand. That would never happen in New York.

o Who needs bars? Chennai’s bar scene is minimal, so the bus is the place to meet people! I’ve met quite a few interesting characters on the bus – some of which have actually become friends! My most significant bus friend, a college student studying naval engineering, recently got me hooked on the Twilight movies…I’m still not sure if he’s a positive influence...

o Small small things: One day, a man sat next to me on the bus. (In retrospect, this was strange, since I was sitting on the women’s side.) He turned out to be a student at IIT Madras from Delhi who, unlike most northerners, loved Chennai. "There are small small things to enjoy here! Like women with flowers in their hair, these traditional dresses, families roaming around on the beach…" He's right. Chennai lacks the hip night life that Delhi and Bombay boast, and North Indians that come are often bored by Chennai. But the city has a magic all its own, the most vibrant of which is seen in the smallest things: paper stars hung for Christmas, the chai-wallah that knows and expects me every morning, a free ride from an auto-wallah in the rain, and my eleven-year old neighbor who belts out Michael Jackson tunes a little too early in the morning, and of course, leaping on to a moving bus in heels. :-)

Posted by Elyse Ahmad

Roshan Vikas

2009-12-21T02:38:00.001-08:00

Last week I sat on the floor with a task force we’ve formed at Roshan Vikas and led a discussion on business development. Anyone could see I stuck out like a sore thumb in this group – I’m not a woman, I don’t wear a burqa, my Hindi is about as good as the average 2^nd grader in India, and I use terms such as “business development.” Still – using a lot of smiles and head nods (doesn’t matter which way – they all mean “yes” here) I was able to facilitate a productive meeting to debate solutions to help Roshan Vikas improve its loan collection process.

This is a far cry from the days when I’d sit in endless meetings pretending to take notes on a potential multimillion dollar preferred structure convertible-debt transaction. This is better. The meetings are still endless and I honestly cannot find a way to sit comfortably on the floor – but at the end of the day, the difference is I’m not pretending about anything here. I do care. We’re discussing the very survival of my NGO and I’m thrilled to play a role in helping shape the groundwork for Roshan Vikas to continue improving the livelihoods of urban Muslim women in Hyderabad’s slums.

To backtrack a bit – my NGO, Roshan Vikas provides this ultra-marginalized community with access to financial services, skills development, and other livelihood promotion activities. To achieve this vision RV had adopted a set of guiding principles that I felt were best expressed in this funnel line object rather than in straightforward bullet form (it’s the former investment banker in me):

While women's empowerment is nothing unique in the NGO world, the other two aspects are key differences between Roshan Vikas and most other microfinance organizations. Most microfinance organizations focus almost exclusively on providing loans and other financial products. RV has a slightly different tact in that it wants to promote savings or “capital formation” as a prerequisite to lending. Encouraging the poor to save seems like an obvious thing to do, but it’s shocking (actually alarming) how many microfinance outfits (especially the for-profit ones) seem to forget this and became obsessed with “selling” loans to individuals that may or may not necessarily need them (another “subprime mortgage crisis” in the making?).

The second aspect – community ownership – is also unique because it means that RV is actually owned by its membership. RV has a thrift cooperative ownership structure in which the women that RV focuses on lending to actually manage the organization. The capital to operate the organization and extend loans is also contributed by this membership base of women who are all organized into self-help groups that meet weekly. I won’t get into too much detail about how this works structurally but what it does mean is that Roshan Vikas is a very flat organization where all decision making is consensus based (very democratic, but also very painfully slow).

I should mention that in addition to providing loans, Roshan Vikas is also involved in artisan’s crafts skills development. Essentially we form groups of local artisans and provide training and access to distribution channels for their goods. I’m not really all that involved with that part of the organization since it involves creativity and artistic talent and I’m more of an excel kind of guy.

Anyhow, back to me. So Roshan Vikas has been around for about 5 years now and has been growing dramatically during that period. It went from 0 to 19,000 members very rapidly and is now running into growth problems that are preventing the organization from making the next jump in scale to ~40,000 members by 2010. RV stopped turning a profit recently and is beginning to suffer from very classic growth related issues that most small businesses face. There are hundreds of small issues – but the essence of the problem is that RV is now losing money despite an expanding membership base (i.e. we have more customers, but we are making less money per customer).

I’ve only been here a short while, but my perspective is that the organization has grown so quickly that controls, human skills, technology, and other resources have not kept up and this is acting as a bottleneck to further growth. My role is to coordinate an “intervention” to identify where the bottlenecks are, what can be done about them, and then execute – all by March (our target month for turning a profit). I work closely with a “core group” that includes Roshan Vikas’s CEO, an external turnaround specialist management consultant, auditing firms, a few key staff members, and other experts as needed. When I first started my NGO mentor asked me to serve as a “change agent” because of my unique status as a foreigner with a private-sector business background. I still have no idea how to be a “change agent”, but I have quickly learned that my outsider status really does give me certain privileges (and challenges) that allow me to propose and execute new ideas far easier than the more entrenched staff.

Progress can be slow – and sometimes it’s very easy to lose hope. I’ve struggled a lot with the defeatist attitude of so many of the staff who are very good at presenting me with problems, but tend to shrug their shoulders when I ask about solutions. Still, we are already starting to see some encouraging results. Our repayment rate has climbed from 81% to 97% this past week and I know there is still plenty of room for improvement.

How much experience do I have in NGO turnarounds? Absolutely none. My background is in PowerPoint presentation and mind numbing Excel models, not microfinance consulting. This used to worry me a lot, but I’ve come to realize that 40% of my role is simply common sense. The other 60% is persistence. I’m here to accelerate change and that simply won’t happen unless someone is constantly hammering for it. In other words, I’ve come half way around the world to be a pest. My parents would agree – I’m the right man for the job.

Wish me luck.

Posted by Sanjay Sharma

Behind the Scenes of "Wow! What's that sound?"

2009-12-14T22:04:00.000-08:00

“I want to be...I want to study English really well and I want to have a big company, a big computer company and employ lots of people.” --Chandru, 4th standard (translated from Tamil)

Chandru is in the 4th standard and studies at a government aided Tamil-medium school in Chennai. He can barely read and write in English, yet he has been studying it for four years. He is one of the child artists in the pilot episode of the educational English DVD series Aid India’s English team released on Tuesday, December 8th in Chennai at Madras Terrace House.

Chandru’s father is an auto driver and his mom is a domestic helper. They live in a slum a 10-minute walk from Aid India’s office. Driving or walking on the main road, you wouldn’t know the slum existed. It is set back off the main road, down a side street. Turn right at the small stall and enter a narrow dark alley, you’ve reached the slum. Chennai has some very visible slum areas, especially near the river and the beach, but nothing like I’ve seen in India’s other major metropolitans. Most of Chennai’s slums are hidden and integrated into almost every neighborhood, but just behind that alley you always pass and dare not look into. Around that corner that houses a garbage heap. And inside that old dilapidated building that used to be a Café Coffee Day. It’s there...down there. Just around that dark corner, hidden, yet in plain sight if you look for it.

I first visited Chandru’s house after our first day of shooting. I escorted him home, except that I ended up chasing him home because he didn’t want to be bothered with adults accompanying him. He undoubtedly knows the area and all the people living in it like the back of his hand. Yet I felt a responsibility to walk him home. Just as we turned off the main street he took off running. I was shouting asking him to stop, slow down, wait for us...please. It was no use. He just kept turning around and waving, thinking he had seen the last of us. But we didn’t give up; we would make sure he made it home. At the corner of the small stall, a group of guys started giving rude looks and making comments about me (a blonde foreign woman) being there. We asked where Chandru’s house was. Immediately they switched on their best polite gentlemen appearance and walked us down the narrow dark lane, stepping over people lounging in the path, inching between water pumps and houses, and weaving between the odd chicken, crying toddler and woman beating clothes. After turning down several even narrower and darker lanes, we reached a group of young men surrounding Chandru asking him about his new status as a movie star. After one day of shooting, he was already famous.

The next day while I was escorting Chandru home, a male colleague from the office accompanied me for safety. We held onto the strap on Chandru’s backpack so he wouldn’t run off this time. The third night our shooting ran very late and we were taking Chandru home after 11pm. Three of us walked him home, two ladies, one man...and I, the foreigner, was the only one that knew how to get in and get out of the slum, the only known face to Chandru’s neighbors. It was only after we had dropped off Chandru, apologized to his mom for keeping him late and we were safely back out on the main road that I got scolded for having ever walked him home. Ignorance is definitely bliss in this scenario. While my colleagues could understand the passing comments as I walked through the slum, I was unaware, not of the comments, but of the content of the comments. I can choose naïveté and boldly ignore such situations. I’m never 100% comfortable walking down dark alleys in any country, but I have never felt unsafe in Chennai. As a foreigner, perhaps I should be more cautious. However, it is precisely my naïveté and my lack of certain cultural knowledge that allows me the privilege of accepting unknown circumstances without judgment. However, my colleagues were too aware of the situation, and I hazard a guess that next time, they will send someone else to drop him.

It’s the feeling of being so at home with your environment and surroundings that seemingly difficult situations become easy to navigate. And yet, it is being far from home that allows expats access to new and different experiences. It is a complicated juxtaposition between (some level of) cultural integration and knowing that total acceptance by the host culture will never be achieved. Both come with privileges and restrictions attached to them that require constant negotiation—the basis for a unique, interesting and constantly challenging expat life.

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The Ready to Read program of Eureka Child (the education initiative of Aid India) is producing an English language DVD series. The DVD series is an integral component of the Ready to Read program because it provides necessary audio-visual support by encouraging students to practice speaking, listening, reading and singing in English. This bilingual, Tamil-English, DVD will contain 12 episodes threaded together by a group of students, their traveling magician friend and a forest creature. Each episode will introduce the characters to English sounds, reading activities, new vocabulary and original songs.

In addition to providing the educational context and reasons behind why we made the pilot, this short behind the scenes documentary includes interviews with the child artists, entertaining video snippets, bloopers and behind the scenes outtakes. We are hoping to transform this pilot episode into a 12 episode educational DVD series as soon as we secure additional funding.

Behind the Scenes of "Wow! What's that sound?" from Kirsten Anderson on Vimeo.

Wow! What's that sound? - A 5 minute teaser from Kirsten Anderson on Vimeo.

You can also find Ready to Read's DVD initiative on kickstarter.com.

Once complete, the DVD series will be a key component in Eureka Child’s English program and will be distributed to rural schools across the state. The program will have an initial reach of 250 schools, or approximately 20,000 children in rural Tamil Nadu. Our objective is to increase the number of students who can read sentences in 5th standard to 50% from 16%, an increase of 200%. We plan to extend our outreach to interested schools and will partner with other NGOs. In addition it will be available to the general public through Eureka Books.

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It is exactly students like Chandru, his friends at his Tamil-medium school, and his peers in his neighborhood that the Ready to Read program and the DVD series is targeting. Improving the quality and content of second language instruction as well as increasing the exposure to the second language must be a focus at vernacular-medium schools. Without bilingual education, students will never have the chance to achieve their dreams: to become an IAS officer, a police officer, a teacher or to own a own computer company.

This project and getting to know students like Chandru, enable me to call this my home, thousands of miles from the home I grew up knowing.

____________________
Kirsten Anderson has extended her AIF fellowship at Aid India’s Eureka Child, a Tamil Nadu based education initiative working to improve the quality of education for all children across the state. Kirsten has been developing the content and printed materials for the primary English reading curriculum, Ready to Read, as well as working on the production of the pilot episode of the new educational English DVD series.

Interaction: Revised

2009-12-13T20:51:00.001-08:00

Part of learning new things is doing them wrong. Sometimes repeatedly. But too often, we celebrate our successes while cowering from our failures. Failures are valuable and deserving of appropriate recognition. Many have caught on to the idea of celebrating failures, as is evident with the astounding success of FAILBlog. Still, driving a car into an empty pool is somehow more forgivable than driving a relationship into the ground.

India has been a succession of failures for me—failures I’m proud of and want to share with others. Communication has been one of my biggest challenges. Ironic, considering I’m fluent in the local language. Maybe because I look Indian and think American, people are less forgiving of my cultural incompetence, rendering social and professional interactions both amusing and painful. The business transaction as it exists in the States does not exist here. Rather, every transaction is a kind of social ballet requiring grace and tact. To cope, I replay my clumsy social fumbles with more apropos endings, practicing for the next time. I call this Interaction: Revised.

Interaction 1: Tiffin Auntie

Context: I get a tiffin, a kind of bento-box lunch, from this auntie who lives down the block. Because Gujaratis put sugar in everything, I told Auntie I had diabetes. Instead of sugar, Auntie put potatoes in everything so I had to break it down for her.

Me: Auntie, potatoes don’t agree with me. Stop putting them in everything. Bye.

Auntie: [Sadface] Oh. Ok.

I get home to find she has put extra of everything in my tiffin so it’ll last me a few extra days. I feel awful.

Interaction: Revised

Me: Auntie, I love your food. I’m getting so fat because it’s delicious! The doctor has actually asked me to cut back on starches because of my blood sugar. Would you mind putting less potatoes in the tiffin?

Auntie: [Smiling] No problem!

Lesson: Treating people like business transactions doesn’t work in India. Everything here is reliant on a complex web of relationships. Tiffin auntie is your Auntie first, and your food source second.

Interaction 2: Slum Youth

Context: We did a group meeting with our youth from all over the city. They come from some of the roughest neighborhoods in Ahmedabad, and they are doing amazing things for their communities, like running health awareness campaigns and organizing youth activists.

Youth: Ma’am, now we’ll come to Foreign [the U.S.] to visit you. Because you’re there now we have friends and family there too.

Me: [Silence / Looking awkward.]

Interaction: Revised

Youth: Ma’am, now we’ll come to Foreign to visit you!

Me: What you want to go to Foreign for? Look at me, coming all the way here for a job! Stay right where you are, you can get a great job in Ahmedabad. [This is true. SAATH’s Umeed program trains and places slum youth in corporate jobs.]

Lesson: Be truthful, in a nice way. It’s respectful to the other person. This was a tough one for me because I don’t want to make false promises, but I feel the burden of the privilege I enjoy. SAATH empowers youth to lead the best lives they can right where they are, which is a sustainable solution.

Interaction 3: Landlady

Context: Our rent is pretty steep by local standards. Our landlady thinks that she has all the rights of a landlord and none of the responsibilities. Her husband, our landlord, has no say in anything. I think she castrated him shortly after conceiving their second child.

Me: Auntie, our flat is infested with ants. They’re coming from everywhere. It’s uncontrollable. You must call someone to spray. They’re biting us in the night.

Auntie: This isn’t America where you can just call someone to spray your house. How can I pay an exterminator a third of what you pay for rent in the month?!

Me: [hangs head]

Interaction: Revised

Me: Auntie, our flat is infested.

Auntie: We can’t do anything about it. Deal with it.

Me: Auntie, I’m sorry I need to bother you, but where else can I go? It’s a strange town, where will we go?

Lesson: Stand up for yourself, and do it smiling. A little deference goes a long way. By the way, the last time we had an issue with the apartment, I stood up to Auntie. Things got done.

Interaction 4: Sangeet Teacher

Context: I want to learn to sing. I miss music. Lipi, from my office, gave me the number of this guy Mihir who teaches voice.

Me: [on phone] Hello, May I please speak to Mihirbhai?

Auntie: Lady, what do you want to talk to Mihir about? He’s just at school this morning, he’ll be home at 1 to take lunch and finish his lesson.

Me: Uhh…maybe I want to talk to his dad?

[I explain that I’m here from America and I want to learn to sing blah blah…]

Auntie: Oh! Don’t worry, I’ll tell Mihir you called and he’ll definitely give you a call when he gets home. You must come home for dinner one day too and meet all of us.

Lesson: Know who you’re talking to. Or else risk betrothal.

For the overly independent, India is a lesson in interdependence. At SAATH, I’m working to broker relationships between a variety of stakeholders, and communicate the lives of slum dwellers to the outside world. In India, I’m working on my own personal communications and PR strategy, pulling myself out of my shell and extending a hand into the hot desert sun.

_______________________________

Meghna Shah is at SAATH, an Ahmedabad-based NGO that uses market-based strategies for poverty alleviation. Meghna is working on a communications strategy for the organization, and learning to say no in a nice way to aunties who want her to marry their sons.

The Top Down (Approach)

2009-12-10T21:41:00.001-08:00

I remember reading the vault guide and always wondering when in real life I would ever use the “top down” vs. “bottom up” approach.

And today, as I sat in Ahmedabad, Gujarat inside my friend's Wagoner, it happened.

The answer to the “bottom” is the top down approach. In my mind, there are two very hot topics in the development space:

1. Climate Change

2. Bottom of the Pyramid

How do you reach the bottom of the pyramid, and do it in an environmentally sustainable way? The key: you start from the top down!

The answer potentially doesn’t lie in India, or if it does, it doesn’t lie in the slum community. In fact, in order to get those at the bottom of the pyramid to use more environmentally friendly products, or take loans to buy solar lamps instead of battery powered lamps, we need to start at the top. We need to start with influencers.

Who are the influencers?

Heroes – ex. Doctors (Okay not just any doctors, but doctors that live in small villages, they are huge influences in small communities)
Builders (builders higher contractors, laborers, and day workers, who all use tools, equipment, and supplies that are consumed by the top of the pyramid)
Those with buying power (everyone idealizes those with buying power, people want to have the liberty to make the choices that others have, and they would probably make the same choices if they had that they money to have that chance)
Westerners (I am just going by what I see and hear here, this is not because I have an ego or something… even bollywoodidealizes Americans)

Although we may educate the slum community on the benefits to the environment, when using “green cement” or “solar powered” lanterns, if we aren’t using them ourselves, and if they aren’t being idealized on television or in movies (television and movies that get the bottom of the pyramid), then why would someone want to take a loan to buy these things, or why would they want to pay more for them?

Let’s look at a typical buying pattern for any consumer when looking at solar lanterns as an example:

Is the quality better? (perhaps, but not on cloudy days)
It is cheaper? (initially no, but in the long run yes)
Do most people use it ? (no, people generally have electricity lines running directly to their house)
Is it better for the environment ? (yes, but remember initially it is more expensive)

A consumers will typically buy something if it is “popular” or they need it. And when they need it, they go for what is most reliable, and definitely what is cheaper. Secondly, most consumers like instant gratification. So why would someone want to get something expensive, when it only pays off in the long run?

In any case, besides the “top of the pyramid” being the influencers, they are also the highest consumers of excess crap. I mean even I’m guilty of it. I probably didn’t need to buy Nutella yesterday, but I did, because well, I like it. Okay so this doesn’t really have to do with Nutella, but more with not buying new things until we really need new things. Or not buying stuff, we really don’t need. What I mean to say is as influencers, policy makers, etc. , we should essentially start with ourselves.

So what is the conclusion? I am encouraging all of you to go and buy solar lamps, wind turbines, etc. to light your houses, instead of using the grid. Since I know that is not holistically practical, what I would like to do instead is to tackle the influencers one at a time. Maybe the doctor in the local village, or the builders who build things, or bollywood. In any case please don’t take my examples as the end all, instead please understand what I’m trying to say.

Posted by Bijal Shah

Dream Connect – Part 1

2009-12-10T05:24:00.000-08:00

Time flies by way too fast and I just like all the other AIF Fellows, have the unique opportunity to positively impact the lives of hundreds to thousands of youth due to the work and programs we implement within 10 months.... yep, no pressure at all.

I am working with the NGO Dream A Dream, whose main focus is to empower children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills and at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering. Over 90% of the children Dream A Dream works with are young children in the age group of 5-14 years old. However, since 2007, they have started seeing children grow into young adults and continue to struggle in making a successful transition from the dependent environment of a school / shelter / institutional care system into an independent living environment. Children are being lost at the last mile, during one of the most crucial periods. Due to this, Dream A Dream felt that it was critical to close-loop life skills intervention by bringing to the young adults employability and higher educational opportunities so they are able to make wider choices and have a greater chance at becoming successful. This is where I come in.

My project is to launch 'Dream Connect', a network of life-skills centers for underprivileged 16+ young adults who are 10th/12th standard drop outs, unemployed, and those who are not actively pursuing higher education. We want to 'connect' these young adults into a meaningful career and adulthood by providing a location where they can enhance their situation through foundational life skills development (English, technology, communication, self-confidence, decision making, etc.), mentoring, career guidance/counseling, training/skills enhancement modules, and a knowledge resource library. The goal is not to be a vocational training center, but to be the connection to other training/vocational centers, personality development courses, government/corporate schemes, scholarships, work and study programs, etc.

This is my first exposure into the world of life skills and education (I'm from a IT consulting background), so my approach is to use technology as a tool to deliver life skills as well as developing content and a curriculum based on real environments and scenarios. I want to be able to develop a dynamic and innovative content delivery methodology / framework that is not dependent on facilitators, locations, vocations, etc. so it can be easily scaled.

Last week I launched the Dream Connect pilot. A 16 session / 8 week course on problem solving, communication, and creative/analytical thinking through the use of technology. My main goal is to remove the assumptions and repetitiveness of memorization that is so prevalent in the Indian education system. I want to remove the stigma that larger opportunities aren't in scope for these children, and why not strive for something more. Being completely optimistic, if I can turn 25 students, who haven't touched a computer into researchers trying to enrich and develop their own lives out of their own volition, we would have succeeded. Our first 3 classes have been more successful than I ever could have imagined, and I owe most of the credit to my very skilled instructor who delivers in English and Kannada, but there are still 13 more classes of content that has to be developed and delivered.

There are many challenges due to the fact that these young adults don’t have the communication tools necessary for staying in touch. Many of our students could drop out due to livelihood pressures from the immediate family, so how do we keep these youth motivated enough to keep attending when they are so accustomed to immediate gratification? What will be our final take-away and value-add? What is the market demand, and how do we make the program self sustainable? There are just a few of the issues that I hope the pilot program will shed some light on in these next few months. Stay tuned for Part 2.

Posted by Nandan Satyanarayan

Maher

2009-12-07T09:13:00.001-08:00

“Hamare gar mai Papa ne Mummi ko bhot mara”
“In our house, Father hit Mother a lot”

“Is liye Aap ithar hai, naa?”
“That’s why you’re here, right?”

“Ha(n)!”
“Yes!”

“Lehkin Mummi kidar hai?”
“But where’s Mummi?”

“Woh to gar gahi!”
“She went home!”

***

Back on Sunday, November 8, I began volunteering with Maher Ashram. There are Maher centers throughout Pune, though the sizes of these centers greatly vary. I have been informed that, throughout Pune, there are approximately 21 Maher units that engage in a number of different activities. These activities run the gamut of services, ranging from providing housing to impoverished or orphaned children to rehabilitation programs for abusive husbands.

I had been introduced to Maher through an assignment I was working on for my fellowship. During the time, I was visiting a private English medium school known as Gyanankur so as to get better acclimated with the Indian education system and examine the acquisition of English language skills in a classroom environment.

While at the school, I ended up developing a relatively good working relationship with the teachers. Well enough, at least, for them to mention at least a couple of times that a fair number of the students attending the school, around 35, were Maher kids, coming from the children’s home in Wagholi. Notably, this school visit had been in early October.

As the month continued on, I found myself increasingly bored on the weekends. Living in Balewadi, Pune is not a very exciting experience, as this developing gaon has neither the excitement of city life nor the charm of village life (as another fellow so eloquently pointed out once). Additionally, I found myself increasingly discontent, as I had no volunteer engagements at the time. As someone who staunchly believes in the power of civil society, civic engagement, and volunteerism, I was disappointed in myself for not being engaged. So, when I came across Maher’s website while searching for volunteer opportunities in Pune, I jumped at the opportunity to set a meeting with Maher’s founder, Sister Lucy, to begin volunteering with the Maher kids who attended Gyanankur.

I went into the meeting with a lot of hopes and expectations. Having worked a great deal with children in the past, I figured that I would be able to contribute a lot to the organization. And, going forth with the typical American mindset that I need to go into a situation with a plan of action and an agenda, I sought to have Sister Lucy clearly articulate what the kids’ needs were so I could begin working to address those needs. I was disappointed, however, when Sister Lucy made no specific mention of areas in which I could help. She only mentioned that I should go there and simply speak and play with the students, as this would help improve their English skills and would best serve them.

At the time, I did not understand Sister Lucy’s request. After all, I had a ton of experience ranging from camp counselor to tutor. Surely I could set up something, anything, for the children. Perhaps I could work on planning a summer camp for them? Maybe I could tutor them in English? Or, since I was studying innovative teaching techniques, perhaps I could teach the Maher staff how to better help the kids with their lessons using fun pedagogical and teaching techniques? Why would Sister Lucy ask me to engage in something so non-descript as, effectively, simply hanging out with the kids? Do the kids or staff have no tangible needs I can seek to address?

Shortly after arriving at Maher for my first day of volunteering, I realized the brilliance of Sister Lucy’s request. The location I was going to volunteer in, as Sister Lucy had mentioned ahead of time, was not just a children’s home; it was also a “mentally disturbed” women’s shelter (their term, not mine) and a care facility for the neglected elderly. On account of this, there generally was not a dearth of volunteers. Volunteers come all the time, one having recently left just a few weeks prior to my arrival. These volunteers generally stay for a (relatively) long period of time and function in a particular role, such as teaching acting classes, working with the children on arts and crafts, and so forth.

Interestingly, these very acts of volunteering, while incredibly helpful, seemingly led the children to develop particular perspectives about the volunteers and their roles. Similarly, having been assigned a task, many of the volunteers would end up completing that task alone, perhaps to the neglect of some of the other needs of the kids and mentally disturbed women (the elderly were housed in a different building). After all, it would be difficult for a volunteer to spend individual time with each child while simultaneously attempting to conduct an activity for 35 children.

In not assigning me a particular role, Sister Lucy had effectively done two things. First, she allowed me the flexibility to serve in a role as I saw fit and develop my own volunteer schedule. Considering the large degree of travel I will have to do for work, this was absolutely imperative for me. Second, and perhaps more importantly and to the point, this extremely flexible assignment would allow the children to see me however THEY saw fit. I was not Uncle Samir, the teacher. Nor was I Uncle Samir, the counselor. I was simply Uncle Samir, and the kids could therefore assign whatever role to me they desire.

So, I became Uncle Samir, the guy who shows movies on his laptop. And Uncle Samir, the cricket player. Or Uncle Samir, the human climbing post (35 kids living under a single roof and sharing meager facilities tend to have a relatively loose concept of personal space…go figure). But, perhaps more relevant, I often became Uncle Samir, the confidant. Or Uncle Samir, the friend. Or Uncle Samir, the big brother.

It was an ingenious move by Sister Lucy, and one I have only recently come to appreciate. And I think it is the right role, as attestable by the large number of kids vying for my attention at any given time. I only wish there were more volunteers to serve a similar role so that the children would all receive the individual attention, smile, hug, and companion they so desperately desire, even if for only a week.

Unfortunately, it seems that most local Puneites rarely volunteer relative to foreigners, which is an incredible shame.

***

“Woh to gar gahi!”
“She went home!”

“Woh gar gahi? Kyu?”
“She went home? Why?”

…
No response.

“Koi bhaat nahi. Aap ko ithir mazaa aara hai, naa?”
No worries. You’re having fun here, right?”

The conversation above occurred between a young Maher child and me. She approached me, out of the blue, and set this staggering matter-of-fact statement before me with a huge grin on her face, expressing this bombshell with a child-like innocence and lack of awareness of the implications of what she was saying. She came to Maher from an abusive household with her younger brother and mother; the mother has since returned to the father but sensibly (or is it selfishly?) left her children at Maher as she purportedly went to try to reconcile her relationship with her husband.

Though I personally doubt the mother’s selflessness (though I totally believe her story as it is far too common), I honestly hope that things work out in the siblings’ best interest in the end. It would be absolutely horrible if, during this situation with her parents, she ends up losing her innocence, happiness, and trust in what becomes a ferocious cycle of trust and disappointment.

I hope that, unlike one kid at the shelter, she doesn’t become a child so conflicted about physical contact that she will jump onto your neck one minute but scream bloody murder when you lift her up the next. Or like another child, becomes so deprived of attention that she frequently acts out in her own selfish interests, often to the derision of her brothers and sisters at the Ashram. Or, like a third child, becomes so needful of adult interpersonal interactions that she constantly hangs onto visitors and becomes visibly distraught when they leave… or becomes even worse off, as far too many children throughout India know far too well.

***

“Koi bhaat nahi. Aap ko ithir mazaa aara hai, naa?”
No worries. You’re having fun here, right?”

…
No response.

“Nahi?”
“No?”

She runs a few steps toward the stairs, turns to flash me a huge grin inviting me to follow, and continues on her way to the playground. All is apparently out of mind for her, thankfully.

Not for me, though. My mind is reeling.

Posted by Samir Panjwani

Encouraging Micro Entrepreneurship in Rural Bengal

2009-12-03T07:16:00.000-08:00

At a young age, we learned that we have five demarcated senses and we are lucky if each one is intact – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. From the moment I begin my journey to our rural centers, I am sure my five senses are engaged and at work.

My project at Anudip Foundation for Social Welfare is to help develop its Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP). Anudip’s mission is to create livelihood opportunities for low-income rural communities by training them in the “new economies” and helping them get jobs. Shying away from traditional livelihoods such as farming and handicrafts, Anudip’s beneficiaries are learning business and computers skills. Anudip’s goal is to show that rural communities can and should participate in India’s techno-savvy and computer-dependent industries. So many urbanites have reaped the benefits having been trained in computers that Anudip hopes to transfer this to the large human capital sitting, ready and able to work in rural Bengal.

Each day, we attempt to answer how we can prevent rural communities from migrating from their rural landscapes to the big city in order to seek employment. What alternative jobs and sectors can Anudip graduates be a part of while remaining in their local environment? Anudip’s response is encouraging skilled-based micro-entrepreneurship. Our Entrepreneurship Development Program works like this - we provide first-rate, Microsoft certified courses (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Tally, etc) to people of all ages who have never seen a computer prior to our courses. As students graduate, some become inspired and interested in using these skills to run self-employed, group-based businesses (Cyber Cafés, Desktop Publishing businesses, Financial Accounting businesses, etc). Once they apply to our program, they are responsible for securing a fit location for their business and then we provide a zero-interest rate equipment loan (computers, digital cameras, printers, scanners, copy machines). They are required to pay this back in predetermined installments after year one. Along with the loan comes mentorship, strategy sessions, hand-holding and ultimately a 24-hour Anudip helpline given they run into any problems along the way.

As an example, we are currently helping three young girls living in a Muslim slum who, with our guidance, are starting a Computer Coaching Center for young kids in their area. This is a monumental conception in their slum as women and business rarely go together. Not only will their business provide them better livelihood options, they are serving as role models in their community and are becoming independent, self sufficient women. In addition, there are no computer-based businesses within 10 kilometers so their skills are specialized and desirable. Rural dwellers travel hours to Calcutta to take a passport photo, print a wedding card invitation or book an online train reservation. There is a “demand” for IT-enabled businesses in the rural and semi-urban areas of West Bengal and Anudip has the “supply” to feed this need. We are enabling rural villages to get access to information via a commonly used agent – the computer.

My responsibility is to create a process around identifying entrepreneurs that graduate from our program, help cultivate their ideas and mentor them along the way. They need assurance that they have emotional support as starting a new venture can be quite risky. Anudip graduates look for help with developing business plans, pricing and marketing their services, and most of all building personal confidence. Dibyendu, my partner at Anudip on EDP, and I spend our days strategizing and then testing our ideas in the field. We find that most of our entrepreneurs live in rural villages with limited accessibility to common modern resources. They, however, are not yearning for the urban lifestyle. They are in search of improved livelihoods in their own natural environments.

The Current State of My Five Senses

Seeing: My journey from Calcutta to the rural villages is a contemplative time for me. Whether we’re in a car, train, bus or auto-rickshaw, I make sure to get a window seat. One headphone in and one out to drain out the background noise, I stare out at the changing landscape. Within an hour, the environment goes from large cars, tall buildings and crowded streets to bicycles, mud homes and green rice paddies. The drive from the city to the village reminds me of why my work is so important. The context rural communities come from is drastically different from their city friends yet they want the same opportunities to provide for their families as city dwellers do. Side note: the number of colorful sunsets I have seen on my trips back into the city is beyond lucky.

Hearing: I love going to the field and speaking a combination of broken Punjabi/Hindi to local Bengalis. I think they appreciate my efforts. I'm getting quite skilled at gesturing, laughing and smiling to get my point across. It is most important that I am a good listener because as I ask a lot of questions, I have to pay attention to context clues given the language barrier. When all else fails, I say “khub bhalo” (“very good”) and then ask Dibyendu for a detailed translation on our ride home.

Smelling: I have asthma, allergies and other respiratory problems which Calcutta likes to agitate. I also have a sincerely receptive sense of smell which make Calcutta’s aroma of smoke, gas and urine particularly apparent. If anyone knows of a competition or game show where smell is tested, please let me know. I’d dominate and share my winnings. Anyway, spending afternoons outside in less congested areas is a gift to my lungs. I am so content working outside surrounded by trees, leaves and simplistic beauty.

Tasting: This experience is beginning to tickle my taste buds of how business development and encouraging entrepreneurship is important to the development of rural India. I am finding myself an interesting crossroad - entrepreneurship and social business. India is so massive that it needs the brunt of large scale projects and social businesses to capture the largest populations living in the rural areas. I like the taste of this so far and hope I can contribute my own flavor to this field.

Touching: We spend about two days a week in our suburban office in Salt Lake and the other three days at our field centers. In the office, we create workshops, manuals and questionnaires which serve a s templates for the remainder of the week. We then talk to prospective entrepreneurs, find out what they need and react from there. Given how grassroots my project is (working one-on-one with entrepreneurs), some may say the project is not scalable. However, I believe the handful of rural villagers we are touching sides with “quality” in the aged-old debate of quality versus quantity. For this reason, I am confident we can make a marginal, yet meaningful impact.

Posted by Jessica Sawhney

Hitler’s not such a bad guy after all

2009-11-30T01:15:00.001-08:00

After work the other week, I had a craving for chai (which, admittedly, is less of a craving now and more of a necessity to function) and stopped at my favorite provision store/tea stand to grab a cup. Ramesh, the store owner, and I exchanged pleasantries in broken Tamil for a bit before I turned toward the street to watch the late afternoon crowd. I absolutely love the tradition and the strange absence of it that is combined in a cup of tea. The crowd outside each tea stall encompasses both genders, all ages, and most middle-class professions, without outlining any rules for interaction between the diverse tea-takers. Some people will talk for an hour, some people will stand quietly, some will gulp their tea and rush on; there are no customs or expectations in any case, so long as you hand over four rupees with your empty glass tumbler. Even though my blonde head clearly stands out, I actually feel strangely comfortable swirling the coarse grains of sugar while quietly taking in the conversations and traffic around me.

My usual musing was disrupted by a coarse smoker’s gargle, that curious medium of phlegm and sandpaper-raw vocal chords.

“Hey, where you from?”

I turned and was greeted by the beaming smile of a portly middle-aged man wearing the ubiquitous brown uniform of an auto driver. I smiled and answered, preparing myself for the inevitable five-minute conversation about my work and the fact that, yes, I do eat and love spicy South Indian food. Happy for the excuse to practice my Tamil, I asked “Unga paera enna?” (what is your name, formal)?

“Hitler!” he rasped happily. I mean, I’ve met a few people here with some oddball Western names, but….seriously??

My face must have quickly shown how many mental cartwheels my mind was going through to process why on earth this jolly Tamilian man was so inappropriately named. He laughed and said, “English people are not liking my name, because of German Hitler long time ago. But people here are not knowing, so Hitler is okay in India.”

Hitler then proceeded to tell me about his life, his passion for working with kids (he apparently worked as an occasional driver at a nearby school for handicapped children), his handicapped wife, and his friend Steven, a Brit who volunteered at the school for some time. He punctuated all of his stories with blurry cell phone images of smiling kids in school uniforms, stilted formal wallet photos, and several snaps of Hilter and a laughing, skinny white guy. “Steven was like you,” he said, “always asking Tamil words. Everyone thought it not possible for white man to be friends with black Indian, but all wrong. Steven and Hitler are good friends, life friends. All life friendship, all life beautiful, yes?”

He beamed again, and I couldn’t help returning an equally wide smile. Planting our rupees down alongside our empty cups, Hitler made me take his number as we made motions to part. “When you not busy, you come see my school. See the children. Wonderful children, Steven’s children, you come see in free time!”

I said that I would, shook hands tightly, and began to walk down the street as Hitler called after me. “All life good life. Happy days!”

“Happy days!” I shouted back.

*******

A week went by as they quickly do here, my increasingly precious “free time” filled with work projects, dance classes, Tamil lessons, and Indian meals shared with friends and neighbors. I didn’t (couldn’t) forget Hitler, but stored his memory away with the many other beautiful, short exchanges that I have with so many amiable Chennians on a daily basis.

Rushing to the bus stand one morning, I was incredulous when I heard a happy yell in that unmistakable rasp:

“NIKOL! Vannakam! Hello, my friend!”

Cutting in front of several buses, a vending cart, and at least two cows, Hitler’s shared autorickshaw pulled up to the curb beside me. Both equally excited to have met again, we chatted constantly while the villages between my house and work passed by in a blur. Hitler turned back towards me frequently, somehow deftly dodging people, bikes, and animals at top speed (fast even by normal ly crazy rickshaw standards) while enthusiastically sharing his life story and philosophy. His happiness was infectious, and every schoolgirl and businessman that climbed into the auto on the journey was smiling when they dismounted. When we reached Injambakkam, the small community where I work, we of course went back to our favorite tea stall for another saccharine cup and equally enjoyable conversation.

When again it was time to part, Hitler repeated his invocation to meet his family and see his school. This time, I promised, and shook his hand with all I had to show that I meant it. He grinned and gripped back eagerly.

“I think God think very well of Hitler today, to see my friend again. I very thankful for good luck and wonderful life. All good life always! Stay always happy!”

“Happy days!” I replied as I waved, and ruminated on the phrase as I continued my walk to work. I have a lot of them here.

Posted by Nicole Fox

You Look Like a Movie Star.....an Ugly Movie Star

2009-11-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

Every day I take a 30 minute rickshaw to work - usually these rides are uneventful, marked by abrasive rickshaw drivers with poor hearing. Today, however, was the exception. I started chatting with my driver and got his whole life story. How old he is, where he's from, how many kids he has, etc. We made I deal that I would only
speak in Hindi to practice, and he would do the same with English. Over the course of the ride, we kind of bonded. I found out he's got a post-grad degree in economics and was a former professor in UP. He moved to Bombay and became a rickshaw driver because of money troubles. His brother was part of the anti-terror taskforce that acted during the Bombay terror attacks last year. He is also a supporter of the BJP.

Anyway, as we were chatting, I asked him who his favorite actor was. He said Akshay Kumar - he loves him because he's a good looking man.

I asked him what he thought of Abhishek Bachchan. His replied, "I don't like Abhishek Bachchan. He is not a good looking man. Ugly man. He has a black face. You look just like Abhishek Bachchan."

The conversation continued after this, but needless to say, it did not have the same warmth as before.

Kovalam Narratives: Voices of Illness and Recovery

2009-11-05T00:04:00.001-08:00

Morning begins with a 1.5 hour journey via two buses from the Brahmin heart of Madras to the small fishing village of Kovalam. You know you are nearing when you forget the trickle of sweat down your back and the college boys sandwiched against you who blast syrupy Tamil songs from mobile phones at 8 a.m. You only see blue, blue sea and sky, the ebony of water buffalo against ochre beach. You feel the salty sea breeze dry your face.

And you know you have reached when all you can see are ivory minarets and the cupcake-shaped tower of the dargah[i] rising above miles of fluttering green flags bearing the Islamic white crescent and star. The mothers and grandmothers, dressed head to toe in black hijab or in sequin-studded saris, descend down the bus stairs with children in tow or tucked in their arms. They float between the flower and food vendors towards the feather-shaped door of the dargah.

Here is the heart of Kovalam. The scene of sea, sky, and dargah fills me every day, and then I turn right and walk down the wide dirt road to The Banyan Holistic Health Centre, a community mental health awareness and treatment program[ii].

But this is just place.

***

Manu rests on his bed of wooden plank and weakly raises his arm, twisted and quivering from a stroke of four years past. A community worker from The Banyan and I sit on the floor of his home—a room half the size of my kitchen—and listen to Manu’s wife, Lakshmi, explain why she did not bring him to the Health Centre’s psychiatric out-patient clinic for the last month.

Because he has lost the ability of his hand, Manu is unemployed and Lakshmi has toiled to support their family. She spends her days making and selling pine oil and soaps, cooking, and caring for Manu. Their daughter aspires to be a computer scientist and studies for exams in the evenings. She does not help. Lakshmi says she needs to work constantly to pay her daughter’s private school fees, give the monthly rent, feed the family, and pay for Manu’s various medicines. She has no time to bring him to the Banyan.

The community worker asks her what medicines she has paid for, as Manu came to the Banyan months before and received free medication. A quack told the family he could cure Manu with an injection that would cost 15,000 rupees. The family paid. Lakshmi shows us a case of large, white pills and smaller, yellow ones. She has mixed the remaining Banyan-prescribed medication with those given by the quack, and cannot remember when she began to do this. With tears in her eyes, she says that Manu has not improved during the last four years.

In soft, rounded Tamil, the community worker urges Lakshmi to take a few hours off the next Tuesday and visit the psychiatric outpatient clinic. We get up to leave. Manu mutters that he is better and gripping the wall, shakily hoists himself up and walks, step by step to his house’s entrance. His warm eyes follow us as we walk down the path, carrying a shadow of his story.

These same eyes first meet mine, and then the psychiatrist’s, at the next outpatient clinic. During the clinical interview, the psychiatrist unearths more of Manu’s story. Following his stroke, Manu lost the ability to hold anything with his right hand. He could no longer hold the threshing tools and scythe that he used to plant and harvest rice. But his youngest daughter devoted herself to his care. She would bathe, clothe, and feed him. Two years ago, this daughter passed away due to an illness. The psychiatrist rests his pen and looks tired. “I can give him medicine to alleviate the pain in his hand and to stop his talking to the voices he hears. But that only goes so far.” A physical therapist is needed to train Manu to use his hand. An occupational therapist could perhaps design an agricultural tool for Manu to use, or perhaps give him training in another vocation.

The community worker suggests that Lakshmi come to the Banyan and train other long-term patients and women in the Kovalam community in the preparation of pine-oils and soaps, as another source of income. She also informs them of the Tamil Nadu Disability Allowance, a government-provided monthly stipend given to patients with mental illness and other disabilities.

Manu’s eyes tug at a place in me that I did not know existed.

And he is just one voice.

***

At the end of the AIF Service Corps orientation in Delhi, I wondered if mental health was worth devoting oneself to when poverty, lack of education, and the pressures of marriage and dowry still exist—all potential causes of mental illness that I have witnessed during the last two months. Why work to alleviate a symptom of these problems?

Manu is more than a patient, a voice. His mental and physical breakdown have grown out of a mesh of economic, social, and biological problems. Medicines will treat mental illness, but will not heal a broken mind. But what the Banyan is doing and still dreaming of—reaching into the realms of education, vocation, family, and religious structure to promote mental health—is what may ultimately heal and prevent the unraveling of the mind.

*Names have been changed to preserve anonymity.

Posted by Aditi Ramakrishnan

[i] Dargah: a Sufi shrine built over the remains of a Sufi saint. While it is often confused with a mosque, some would argue that a dargah is quite un-Islamic. Muslims, Hindus, and Christians flock to dargahs to pray to the saint himself or to seek a path to God through his blessing. Strict Muslims may not go to dargahs for this very reason of praying to a being other than Allah. In Tamil Nadu, many with mental illness go to the dargah for faith-healing and spiritual treatment.

[ii] The Banyan: a Chennai-based NGO and mental health rehabilitation center primarily for homeless women with mental illness. The Banyan now consists of Adaikalam, a large rehabilitation center in Chennai, BALM (a research unit on mental health), and The Holistic Health Center and Community Mental Health Programme in Kovalam, Tamil Nadu. The Kovalam facilities include a general and psychiatric outpatient clinic, an inpatient unit, and a community for long-term rehabilitation for women with acute mental illness. As a Yale and AIF fellow, I am documenting the Banyan’s community mental health model in Kovalam and writing about perceptions and treatment of mental illness in Tamil Nadu.

Wealth from Waste & Rags to Riches.

2009-10-28T20:59:00.001-07:00

Such are the catchy titles used to introduce social-upliftment based waste management projects in India. Recycling, composting and "going-green" are hot words that generate much social and financial capital for the various NGO's, companies, and corporations trying to get a slice of the waste-management pie. Here's a basic look at the situation in India.

Of course, everyone attempting waste-management here has their own theory of what is best for the environment, best for the waste-workers, and best for the city. It seems to be a trend that some of the larger NGO's waste –management programs’ are positioned more towards making adjustments in the lives of the rag-pickers, rather than working with the rag-pickers to capitalize on the available opportunities to increase their livelihoods. Building self-respect is more of a focus than building capacity. However, I believe, it is only through capacity building that waste-pickers will be empowered and will be able to develop their self-respect.

Helping a waste-picker establish a formal identity (voter ID card, ration card, etc.) is certainly a step in the right direction, but not one that provides a waste-picker with the right tools to increasing his/ her meager income. To talk of identity and self-image is of little use, if that individual continues to live in the same abject poverty from the day before, but today with a piece of paper with their name on it.

Certain NGO's seem to focus entirely on the waste-workers identity, his/her dealings with the municipal corporation, and to create a pseudo-cooperative of these waste-pickers. They shun the idea of raising capital to help the waste-pickers mechanize some of their activities or to make efficient their sorting and processing of recyclables appears to be a second priority to the focus on the workers identity. Mechanization is opposed as it is seen as an off-shoot of capitalization, which they deem exploitative and inherently against sustainability. Then how do they propose to make a dent (environmentally) in the tremendous problem of waste-management, if they lack the resources to collect, sort, process and dispose hundreds of metric tonnes of waste per day? They don't, and they cannot. Such activities are beyond their scope, since physical labour is no longer adequate to tackle waste production in any Indian city. This raises an important question: are they making a difference in the waste management sector, or making a difference in terms of human rights and counseling?

On the flip side of these operations are India's major waste management companies. They have multi-billion rupee contracts in various Indian cities, with heavy mechanization and tremendous capital investments. They can afford to pay their base employees salaries almost double the minimum wage. Their operations are efficient, environmentally significant, and economically positive for all concerned. However, they displace and destroy the livelihoods of the destitute that are engaged in waste-picking in the areas where they operate.

So neither of these two major models target the waste-pickers in terms of increasing the amount of money they get to take home. 93% of India's employed population is employed in the informal sector. Of that, waste-picking and scavenging is the meanest job with almost no skill sets required.

I've been placed with Nidan, in Patna, Bihar. In 2002, Nidan started a cooperative of waste-pickers. It aimed to bring together the people engaged in this work and attempt to uplift their status in society (helping them get a formal identity), get access to micro-finance, social security, insurance, and most importantly- a higher income from the work they did. Over time, it realized that the only way to increase the average waste-pickers income was to allow the waste-pickers to bid for municipal waste management contracts. The only way to do this was to have these waste-pickers (called safai mitras- friends of cleanliness) create their own company. Nidan Swachhdhara Private Limited was created in August 2008 to tackle the problem of waste management in Patna, while uplifting the poor that clean it.

I'm focusing on scaling up and making efficient Nidan's composting operations. Almost 50% of Patna's waste is decomposable organic matter. 12.5% is recyclable. To be able to remove this 62% from ending up in Patna's dumps is the goal. But like all environmental goals in India, it is littered with obstacles: a lack of land, logistical problems in transporting waste, and the greatest problem, a huge lack of public awareness of the acute need to segregate waste at source. India, like the rest of the world has not yet realized the tremendous impact it has on the environment, and the terrible repercussions we shall face in the near future.

Posted by Behzad Larry

Eating by the Rules

2009-10-26T22:45:00.001-07:00

"I can't come to south India," my friend joked over the phone from Mumbai. "They eat with their hands."

I laughed. Eating etiquette is the only thing I cannot handle in Bangalore, this most westernized of eastern cities.

Bring on the cows obstructing the street with their dung and balding skin. Bring on the fleets of rickshaws and cargo trucks swerving to hit you. You can even bring on the locals asking if I'm Nepali and thus if I work on the street. But bring me rice and ask me to eat it by hand -- well, one must draw the line.

"What we choose to eat or refuse to eat, and how we eat it defines us as much as our culture and language," reads the foreword to a Keralan cookbook here. "Cuisine creates a community; it also keeps communities apart."

In south India, I will always remain apart.

I respect the method. It is as precise as it is inimitable, and it goes something like this: First, fill a metal plate with roughly three bowls of coarse white rice. Pour vegetable broth, watery yogurt or a combination of the two alongside. Begin the post-cooking process. Knead the mixture with the tips of your fingers until no grain lies unfondled. Collect inch-wide ball with your fingertips. As fingers rise to mouth, delicately insert the ball with one finger.

This, not dance or tabla, is India's true art.

But you can respect something without feeling compelled to do it, like ascending Everest or investment banking. I watch only, fascinated by each fingerful's dripless journey from plate to tongue. When spoonless cafeterias threaten, I unearth a utensil deposited in my bag after a forgotten yogurt on the run. (Here, yogurt is "curd," pronounced without the earthy American r.) Even the neighborhood joint by my house, where I devour "rice bath" standing beside the same skinny men who drive my rickshaws, provides spoons. No forks or knives, of course -- one doesn't need those unless a non-veg, the freak term applied to anyone who touches meat and sometimes egg.

But rules in India are like clean space, made to be trashed. Today, famished at one of the government schools I work at, I accepted a plate from a teacher and sat across from her. My fingers hadn't touched faucet or soap for six hours. But the rice was so inviting, soft and cooked with enough water to stick. The chickpeas sang of the Middle East, with masala. And then there was the kitchen-fresh curd, some of which was lost in drops on my chin.

The teacher looked at me, then rescued a spoon from a bowl of pickles. "Here," she said. "Eat."

April Yee helps Bangalore's government-school teachers use technology with the American India Foundation's Digital Equalizer initiative. She blogs at AprilEats.com.

Posted by April Yee

A Coconut Saga in Three Parts

2009-10-20T07:24:00.001-07:00

Part I: Where Our Hero Innocently Undertakes a Leisurely Journey and Discovers His Destiny.

Navratri was my awakening to Uttarakhandi Marshallese-ness and the beginning of a Karmic quest that fulfilled my destiny. Uttarakhand is the harbor of Hindu spiritualism: the sacred rivers flow from its snows and millions of pilgrims annually arrive to trek, bathe, and worship at its myriad temples.

My home sits midway up a mountain with one of these very sites, Chandrabadni Temple, at its peak. Shiva's wife, Sati, was split and scattered about Uttarakhand and her torso fell here. The temple itself is a circular building with a conical roof and appears to sit on pine trees already perched above the clouds, allowing views of a snow-capped range that buffers China.

After a few hours working our way up the mountain to the temple, I was laced with a bracelet, marked with a tika, and handed a coconut. Wait, what? I was presented with a coconut, in the Himalayas. I barely held my laughter. After a year spent cracking coconuts (the proper death stare, angle of attack, tooth-tear, ripping method, location of first puncture) in the Marshall Islands, I was handed a coconut at one of the holiest sites in Hinduism. I did not expect this, did not know this was common; this was my first time in a Hindu temple. Nevertheless I felt comfortable, destined from birth to be in this very spot (or at least destined from a year and change ago), fated to destroy this coconut with the strength of my ri-Majol-ness. In my euphoria, I was flipping the coconut between my hands...and then a teacher named Jyoti snatched it from me, grabbed an ax (an ax!), and started opening it. Now, you need no ax to open a coconut, but more importantly: she was robbing me of my destiny! I felt the Fates measuring my thread, preparing to cut. Who ruins someone's destiny? Did she not know?

The coconut was butchered, literally and figuratively, by Jyoti and her adorable ax swings. It eventually split but shards flew into her eyes, onto the temple, onto Sati's torso, into Shiva's nose...it was a debacle. Still, we ate coconut at the top of a Himalayan peak. After, we took the coconut husk and brought it over to a dedicated side temple. Inside was a pyre overflowing with coconut husks. If only the Marshallese knew about these practices, the dedication and reverence shown to the sacred power of the coconut. I was ready to sacrifice myself, but Navratri is a long festival and the pyre was not to be burned for nine more days.

Destiny, roused.

Part II: Where Our Hero Returns to Champion His Fate but is Again Thwarted in His Attempt at Fulfillment.

We returned nine days later, my enthusiasm at a rolling boil. I didn't know yet that the conclusion of Navratri put everyone at that very level of intensity. Approaching the temple I heard the rapid beating of drums, the bustle of children, and the screams of...women? Were those the screams of women? I didn't understand anything except that the cumulative volume waxed in approach. I was mentally preparing myself: no adversary, be it woman, beast, or Sati herself, would prevent me from coconut sacrifice this day.

My adversaries were complicated: the screaming women were enthused devouts dancing as dervishes then sprinting erratically through the crowd; the children zig-zagged around the temple, hunting for whatever free food was being offered; the drum beat emanated from musicians riling the rabble into chaos and rebellion because the temple was closed. Wait, what? The temple was closed? The doors were locked? Peopled herded, women danced, men pushed, but I would not be denied. We scaled the crowd, bounding on toes, then shoulders, then heads, cradling my coconut like a football. We forced our way through a sliver in the gate and I was at the portal of the temple. I entered, received another bracelet, another tika, and my coconut was quickly taken from me and given for prayer. I sat on my knees after receiving my tika, awaiting the return of the key to my destiny. The coconut was pushed to the back. I could see it, it was there, just behind the...just around the...just let me have it and...

In the ebb of the crowd, I was pushed out of the room by a man with an unofficial name tag: "Line Moving Man."

Destiny, foiled.

Part III: Where our Hero Comes to Understand Faith in Karma and His Destiny is Fulfilled.

A few weeks later, at a time that could be anytime, yet in a place that could only be the center of a verdant Himalayan valley, I was cooking dinner with the rest of the teachers. As a nascent Garhwali, I am often assigned to garlic peeling or potato boiling. On this afternoon I was honored with cleaning the dishes. Mid-lather, a German girl who had been helping at APV hurled herself through the door indicating that she had a problem. I spoke English, she spoke English; I stepped up. I assumed that she had diarrhea or stepped on nettles or a leopard threatened her life--something ranging from personally trivial to apocalyptic. She then pulled from her bag a coconut, gently reclaiming her breath and asking that she needed it opened, split along the equator, halved, exactly the way all coconuts are meant to be open, exactly the way I had been trained, exactly the way that the Fates intended.

More succinctly: She asked me to fulfill my destiny.

The others in the kitchen pounced on her ineptitude and ignorance. "Not possible," "no, can not happen this way," "too hard," and "I do not see it," reverberated in broken English, and hope darted from the girl's eyes. I calmly and confidently asked for a chance at it and understood that despite two previous failures, my Karma, the cause and effect of the universe, had finally tipped. Those in the kitchen looked at me oddly and their silence challenged: take a shot, foreigner.

I grabbed the coconut, felt its hair in my palm, glared at it. It did not know (or did it?) that it was futile to resist me, that it had met its match, that it was doomed. I showed it respect: I flipped it, listening to the milk slosh inside; balanced it, sensing the thickness of the meat at each pole; rubbed it, calculating the radius of husk around its equator. And then I pounced.

I tore the dried husk with my teeth--three, maybe four quick pulls (did that coconut just tremble?)--and the naked core sat in my hand. I grabbed a knife (did that coconut just plead?) and rapped its center, spinning it slowly, coordinating the blows. And so simply, so quickly, it cracked in half (did that coconut just cry?), ceased remonstrating, conceded. Everyone agape, I handed her the coconut and walked casually back to washing the dishes.

Destiny, fulfilled.

Charles Iannuzzi works on curriculum and syllabus development at APV School in Anjanisain, Uttarakhand.

William J Clinton Fellowship Program Orientation Report October 2009

2009-10-15T01:24:00.001-07:00

Dates: 2^nd September – 9^th September 2009.

Venue: Vishwa Yuvak Kendra, Chanakyapuri, Delhi.

No. of participants: 19 fellows, 2 full time AIF Staff, Sridar.

Goals:

To orient the fellows about the socio- political- economic scenario of India.
To expose fellows to urban and rural organizations and their functional styles.
To introduce them to the corporate sphere and helping them to understand the difference between the development and the corporate sectors.

To prepare the fellows to the difference in lifestyle and living in India
To create an environment of camaraderie between the fellow fellows and AIF SC staff.

The orientation of the William J Clinton Fellows of 2009-10 was spread over 7 days at Vishwa Yuvak Kendra, New Delhi. 19 fellows attended the orientation week, with one arriving 2 days into the orientation week. The week consisted of various resource speakers, who conducted interactive sessions on a range of topics relating to the development sector in India. Topics including education, health, environment, politics, the corporate world and livelihood were covered by professionals with hands on experience in the respective fields. Along with the guest speakers, site visits to urban NGOs and cultural events were integrated into the orientation week. A visit to the National Gallery of Modern Art, followed by a dinner was organized by Sridar Iyengar, an AIF Board Trustee.

The USA Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer graciously hosted a tea with the fellows (picture below), which was organized by Manju Sadarangani – a previous AIF fellow of the 2001 class and now a political officer to the USA embassy in New Delhi. This thoroughly encouraged the fellows and emphasized the opportunities available to them within the fellowship program. 16 interactive speaking sessions took place and 2 site visits. A scavenger hunt was organized, giving the fellows an opportunity to discover Delhi.

Sessions:

Given the short time duration of the orientation week (bearing in mind from past experiences that fellows are obliged to register at the respective city FRRO offices within 14 days), a strong attempt was made to cover a range of development topics. The week began with a professional management consultant, Rajiv Khurana providing a ‘break the ice’ session for the fellows to become better acquainted with each other. Though not relevant to the development sector, this session enabled the fellows and the AIF staff to get to know one another better through team building and interactive exercises. 84% of the fellows found this session enjoyable and very engaging in terms of discovering more about each other. Tarun Vij gave a detailed presentation on AIF and the work AIF is doing in India, which gave the fellows a lot more information on AIF, enabling them to be prepared as AIF ambassadors whilst in the field. Previous year’s feedback had highlighted the fellows less knowledge of AIF’s work, which was well explained by Tarun. Comments from the fellows stated that it was ‘very enlightening and of value to know exactly AIF’s programs’

Livelihood

On the topic of livelihood and the corporate world, Nachiket Mor (President of the ICICI Foundation) with Deepti Reddy, provided an in-depth presentation on development in the corporate world. The session was very interactive with the fellows, as the speakers presented the ‘business’ aspect of the development world, along with profit for non-profit initiatives that have been undertaken in India. This session opened up the fellows to the opportunities in the social enterprise aspect of development, and received a 79% rating from the fellows.

Alak Jana from Pradan, with more than 10 years experience, gave a grass root level talk on livelihood from microfinance to livestock development. Many of the fellows found him difficult to understand, given the cultural difference in language, however, they were glad to interact with someone from the grassroots who had a lot of interesting content to share.

Health

There were a total of 4 speakers on health in India. Ranging from Public health by Dr. Rajiv Tandon, a member of the Indian Advisory board and the USAID head in India, to ‘health and safety’ by a previous well received speaker; Sreela Dasgupta. Savitri Ramaiah’s session (a previous speaker), provided the fellows with a lot of insight of what to be aware of in terms of health and safety in India and scored an 89% rating on the fellows feedback. Dr. Rajiv Tandon’s session was a more question and answer session, encouraging the fellows to ask questions to areas of interest, a very engaging speaker 84% feedback, the fellows strongly recommended having Dr. Tandon for future sessions.

Anuradha Mukherjee from the Naz Foundation gave a talk on LGBT rights, which was found to be educational to the fellows, but could have had more interaction, hence the 81% rating.

A new topic on mental health in India was added to this year’s orientation by the organization Manas.

Education

Manas Chakrabarty spoke on Education in India, including Demographics and India’s education progress over the last 10 years. As a speaker, he emphasised the potential power and opportunities that the fellows have to help improve the education in India. 87% of the feedback found this session very worthwhile, with comments such as ‘very interesting topic & great teaching style, kept my attention.’

Other sessions:

Shankar Venketeswaran gave a very thoughtful and interesting talk on Indian NGOs. The fellows found him to be a very engaging speaker and his content useful. 81% was the rating of this session.

Jonathon Ripley, an alum and former staff of AIF, gave a presentation on his personal experience as an AIF fellow and presented his video on sexual differences in India. As with the Alumni panel, the fellows found this to be one of the most useful sessions - giving them insight and a step by step procedure on how Jonathon conducted his project when he was an AIF fellow. A question answer session also helped the fellows understand some of the hurdles faced by Jonathon during his fellowship.

Panel Discussions

There were in total 4 panel discussions; The Ashoka Fellows panel, the respective NGOs mentors’ panel, environment panel on waste management and the AIF alumni panel. All were thoroughly enjoyed and of great value to the fellows, giving them a platform to ask many of their questions to people who have worked/ are working in the same space that shall be. The Alumni panel and the mentor panel received the highest ratings of 91% and 87% respectively.

Past fellows, consisting of Kirsten, David, Payal and Pooja had a great interaction session with the fellows, where the fellows were able to discover how previous fellows had gone about their respective projects, hurdles they had overcome and day to day life in India. It was also a great opportunity for the fellows to ask any questions that some of the other resource speakers may not have been able to answer, simple things such as methods of identifying accommodation with tips etc.

The mentor panel is a must for every orientation session – this was the general overall feedback from the fellows. 90% of the mentors arrived in Delhi for a half day discussion as a group; informing all the fellows of what kind of work they will be doing as individuals.

The mentor panel session with mentors from the NGOs

The group then broke up into pairs, the fellows with their respective mentors for a one-on-one session – this was greatly appreciated by the fellows and AIF program staff was present to interact with both the fellows and mentors. The mentors also found this session very useful in terms of communication with AIF and the fellows prior to the fellow’s departure to their NGOs.

The environment sessions were very interactive and consisted of a small panel with Vimlendu Jha, Malati from Chintan and Anita from Conserve. 87% was the feedback from the fellows, who engaged well with the panel, asked a lot of questions and really found the Chintan site visit very interesting and worthwhile, as they were able to gain some on hands experience in the field. Anita from Converse – an AIF partner, introduced the fellows to the use of plastic in recycling and creating bags and other goods which has generated an income business for the rag pickers of Delhi. Some of the fellows paid a visit to the Conserve site on their day off.

The fellows integrated with all the AIF staff both at the AIF office and at the venue, where different staff members would attend some of the sessions to interact both with the resource speakers and the fellows. Having AIF staff present improved communication with the mentors and the fellows and post the orientation week, fellows have been in touch with the relevant AIF staff for advice, information etc, to their projects.

Events and Site visits:

The fellows visited the NGMA gallery, and had two site visits; one to the NGO Chintan (picture below) and the other to Salaam Baalak Trust in Paharganj, Old Delhi.

The site visits were the highlight for a lot on the fellows, who found the opportunity to get a better understanding of some of the development issues at a ground level. The feedback has suggested more site visits should be done with relevant talks post the visit to get a better understanding. As a fun and outdoors exercise, the fellows were sent on a scavenger hunt in Delhi, giving them time to better acquaint themselves with each other and to see more of Delhi on their own. This was followed by a dinner, where they spoke of their experiences at Swagat in Defence Colony.

To intersperse the orientation with some fun elements, the fellows were taught Bollywood dance to get the real taste of India.

Suggestions and other comments:

Many of the fellows responded that more site visits should be made. Some of the sessions were found to be lengthy and given the short time scale of a week, the orientation week was quite intense. Being able to relay what they are taught in the ‘class room’ with the resource speakers, to the outside world with more interaction with NGOs was a big suggestion by the fellows, as they felt just having speakers didn’t provide enough exposure. Pre-reading material and more handouts was another suggestion. Post the orientation week, all presentations and contact details of the resource speakers was sent to all the fellows, encouraging them to network amongst AIFs network for resources.

The overall feedback value is 82% for the orientation week.

PLACEMENTS OF WILLIAM J CLINTON FELLOWS FOR 2009-2010

S. No	Fellow	NGO	Location	Project
1	Tatiana Rostovtseva	RIVER	Andhra Pradesh	Will be working with children in the field of education
2	Nandan Satyanarayan	Dream a dream	Bangalore	Will be working with underprivileged children; helping in curriculum building and IT training
3	Annelyse Ahmad	ICTPH	Chennai	Will be working on health
4	Sanjay Sharma	Roshan Vikas	Hyderabad	Will be working on micro-credit with Muslim women in Hyderabad
5	Jenny Beckstead	Seva Mandir	Udaipur	Will be working on natural resource management in Udaipur
6	Tejas Oderdera	Ashoka	Mumbai/ Gujarat	Will be working on youth empowerment in Somghat in Gujarat as well as in Mumbai
7	Samir Panjwani	ICEE	Pune, Mah	Will be working at curriculum development for children
8	Behzad Larry	Nidan	Patna	Will be working on waste management in Patna
9	Renita Shah	Khamir	Bhuj	Will be working with women craftmen on preserving rual artisanship
10	Bijal Shah	Saath	Ahmedabad	Will be working on the livelihhoods centre model in Ahmedabad
11	Lavina Shahani	ICCHN	Pune, Amravati. Mah	Will be working on health interventions in Maharashtra
12	Charles Iannuzzi	APV School	Uttaranchal	Developing curriculum and syllabus materials underprivileged chidren in the mountains of Uttaranchal
13	Nicole Fox	YRG Care	Chennai	Will be working on HIV/ AIDs in Chennai
14	Nikolai Smith	Janaagraha	Bangalore	Will be working citizenship building in Bangalore
15	Nafisa Ferdous	Jeevika	Kolkata	Will be working on creating alternative livelihoods options for women in Bengal
16	Meghna Shah	Saath	Ahmedabad	Will be working on the livelihoods resource centre creating employment for unemployed urban youth
17	April Yee	DE	Bangalore	Will be working on the digital equalizer program; implementing computer education in schools
18	Jessica Sawhney	Anudip Foundation	Kolkata	Focusing on developing and testing processes to maximize success of Anudip-trained entrepreneurs
19	Aditi Ramakrishnan	Yale Fellow to be placed at Banyan Chennai	Will be working in the field of mental health

Chennai Fellows – Sunday Brunch

2009-10-13T00:04:00.001-07:00

A brunch hosted by Sridar Iyengar, AIF Trustee with AIF William J Clinton Fellows from various years; (from left to right) Elyse (2009-10), Nicole (2009-10), Payal (2003-04), Kirsten (2008-09), Sridar, David (2003-04), Subbhalakshmi (2002-03)

Bhuj

2009-10-12T02:44:00.001-07:00

This past week marked my one-month anniversary here in Bhuj, Gujarat. As a Gujarati (albeit, American born), I myself had to search google maps to figure out where exactly Bhuj is. For those that do not know, Bhuj is a major city of the Kachchh district, located in northwest Gujarat, near to the Pakistan border. One of the most special and reknown things of the Kachchhi culture is its handicrafts (i.e. embroidery, block print, weaving, etc.). Fittingly, I have been placed with an organization, KHAMIR (www.khamir.org), whose focus is to revitalize, reposition and promote the unique crafts of this region. KHAMIR focuses on 7 specific crafts and works with local artisans on a variety of initiatives that at a high-level can be bundled under livelihood and cultural preservation.

In regards to my day-to-day work at KHAMIR, I am still in the process of developing a long-term project. Like any new job, there is a steep learning curve--I have spent my first month reading reports, listening to teammates, visiting different villages, attending workshops, and trying my best to absorb and understand the different facets of the organization, crafts, and various communities. I am hoping (and keeping my fingers crossed) that I can soon identify how and where I can contribute my skills during my short 9+ months here.

In regards to my day-to-day life here in Bhuj, I have been taken back by the smoothness through which things have fallen into place. I found a great apartment, a great roommate, and somehow managed to find a cylinder for gas connection (*it's likely off the blackmarket) all within a few short weeks. While I like to believe that my good luck charm (a 3-d bull-figure with an Argentine peso inside) has played a role bringing me such good fortune, the realistic part of me recognizes the common attribute contributing to my adjustment and integration to the 'Kachchhi life' is undoubtedly the warm and welcoming people here. From my colleagues, to the sweet aunties next door that feed me, to the rickshaw driver that drops me off most mornings and random shopkeepers that somehow understand my broken Gujarati, I am constantly humbled by the graciousness of the people.

Like any experience, there are highs and lows, frustrations and blessings to each day. As I write this, it is hard to believe that one month has already flown by. I look forward to the challenges, opportunities, and the guaranteed chaos that each morning, afternoon and evening promise to bring here and I hope that during these next 9 months I can contribute even a portion of what I can already see myself gaining from this experience.

Panoramic view of the KHAMIR campus I work at each day.

Artisan crafts on display and sale at the KHAMIR outlet

Posing after 3 hours of garba (dancing) during Navratri festival in village of Musca

With colleagues at Mandvi beach on our day off.

Posted by Renita Shah

Mumbai

2009-09-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

There was one thing struck me right away when I arrived in Mumbai, marking the beginning of my 10 month fellowship with the American India Foundation. That one thing was the vibrancy of life contained within this city.

Millions of people from around the world live and work in Mumbai. There is a diversity and energy here that I have not seen in many places. In addition to migrants from throughout the Indian subcontinent, I’ve encountered African, East Asian, European, Afghani, Iraqi, and South American migrants. All these people have made their home in Mumbai and there presence can be felt. At any given time something is going on, and vitality of the city is impossible to ignore. It seems like almost every other day there is some sort of festival or celebration. This became immediately apparent my first day of work with my host site, Ashoka Youth Ventures.

My first day also marked the beginning of the annual Mount Mary Festival, one of Mumbai’s most famous celebrations. The festival is weeklong tribute to the Virgin Mary contained within Bandra, an area noted for Portuguese roots and modern nightlife. At the end of the day, just after taking a few steps out of the office, I immediately stepped into the heart of the festival. There were hundreds of people everywhere – street vendors, elderly couples, young children playing, people from all walks of life that make up the tapestry of the Mumbai community. Just yards from my office were carnival rides, balloon animals, fresh samosas, and even street-side tattoo artists with battery operated ink-injected needles. Just the sight of it was invigorating – and this was only the first day of a week long festival!

Surprisingly enough, the vibrancy outside was only matched by that inside my office. Ashoka Youth Ventures and the Ashoka Mumbai office housed people from all over the world. Just in my office building alone, there are young people who have come from Brazil, Columbia, and the UK. In the office above us another NGO, Unlimited, hosts multiple panels and discussions that brings in NGO experts working in the city who have made their way to India from various parts of the world. India has one of the most dynamic NGO sectors in the world, and you can see that in the stories of the dozens of young men and women who have come here from around the globe to make this world a better place. Yet both these communities are part of what makes Mumbai the city that it is. The idea that over the next 10 months, I will be able to immerse myself in this city and its life is thrilling to say the least.

Posted by Neel Odedara

It's Really Happening: Our First Pride March, by Praveen Basaviah

2009-06-24T03:43:00.000-07:00

In just a few days, on Sunday, June 28, an historic event will occur in Chennai – the city’s first Pride March. We'll join Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi (which had their first marches last year), as well as Kolkata (10 years of marches!) and Bhubaneshwar (first march) as members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, kothi, aravani, queer, and questioning community, along with heterosexual allies, family, friends, supporters from Dalit groups, women’s rights groups, NGOs working on all sorts of issues, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, the young and old, will all march together in solidarity to honor and celebrate the lives, dignity, rights, and courage of same-sex loving and gender non-conforming individuals, to vocalize the need for just treatment of all people, to make ourselves visible.

Last week, we received police permission for the march, the official stamp saying “go ahead. Do. Yo. Thang.” I remember the nervous excitement in the air as my friends and I stood outside the police commissioner’s office, writing the request letter and waiting to enter his office. I remember how we cheered on the street and hugged each other and shared this feeling of “We did it. We’ve got the permission. It’s really happening!”

This march will be the culmination of what has been a complicated and colorful term as a William J. Clinton Fellow for Service in India, a period wrought with frustration and disappointment, mainly with myself, and blessed with experiences, observations, lessons, and relationships that have made the year ultimately a fulfilling one, that have made me 100% sure that I will be coming back to India – a place I can now also call a home – soon after my fellowship ends at the end of August.

As I write this, I’ve just come back with my partner-in-crime, my sistah, Ani, from picking out massive amounts of satin cloth for the tailor to transform into huge rainbow Pride flags that’ll playfully dance in the wind Sunday as we march, skip, frolic, stomp along Marina Beach, the main beach in Chennai, from the Labour Statue to the Gandhi Statue. After leaving the tailor’s, Ani and I sat at the local juice shop, sipping fresh lime-mint-ginger fruit juice loaded with too much sugar, reminiscing about the past couple months and the back-and-forths in preparing for the march: Hey folks, shall we do it? Let’s do it! Who’s gonna help? We’ll all help! Who’s putting in time and effort? No one. Maybe we shouldn’t do it this year. Of course everyone f*cking WANTS a march, but who’s going to put in the time? Let’s wait to build a stronger community. We’ll do it next year, when there will be more people willing and able to put in the effort. Next year. Not this year. Let’s do it. Let’s DO it this year. I’ll help. And I’ll help. And we’ll help. And they’ll help. Hey, I want to get involved! Hey, I can take on this task. And I can do that one! . I’m straight but can I help? Of course! Straight allies welcome! I’ll march! I’ll definitely be there. I’ll spread the word. Are you for real? I’m there! What started out as a meeting between a few of us grew into a community-wide coalition, with people from many different parts of the community spectrum working together to make the Pride March and the various events of Pride Month HAPPEN. As Ani and I sat at that juice shop tonight, we could rejoice in the success of the Pride events that occurred the previous weeks and pulse with anticipation about the upcoming march. The kind of energy I’ve been suffused with over the weeks while working with the other coalition members, coordinating tasks, recruiting volunteers from the queer and ally communities, and spreading the word about Pride Month has been a noticeably unique type of energy, one that has made me vibrate and smile uncontrollably.

It’s only fitting that as I near the end of my fellowship – I go back to the U.S. at the end of August for a few months before coming back to India – I am able to work with my queer sisters and brothers on Pride Month – sisters and brothers of a community and a culture and ways of life that for the past 10 months I’ve had the privilege of connecting with, bonding with, getting the opportunities to understand the complex nuances of – from the intricacies of sexual identities here, to the politics within and between sub-communities, to the variety of work being done around sexual health and civil and human rights. I think about some of the ways I’ve been fortunate to experience and understand the world of gender and sexuality in India…

• the way sexual identities differ along class lines….“gay/queer” identities are used by those with more class privilege, higher education (and thus more English-speaking) and Western exposure, while “kothi” and other local identities are used by those from more working class and poor SES, who have thus had less access to education and are non-English-speaking
• the elusiveness, complicated nuances, and infinite permutations of gender identity/sexual orientation…for example, the fluidity between “kothi” (same-sex loving men with a strong feminine identity) and “aravani/hijra” (male-to-female transgender…aravanis are the TGs in Tamil Nadu, while hijras are the TGs in other parts of India)
• the extreme lack of visibility and support for lesbians and trans men (female-to-male)….the suicides that have happened among lesbians.
• the pressure within hijra and aravani communities to conform to a strict idea of how to be hijra/aravani…the disdain they have for hijras/arivanis who have romantic relationships with other trans women
• the Tamil Nadu government’s progressive stance on and support of the transgender community when compared to the rest of India – ration/identity cards where you can choose M for male, F for female, or T for transgender; free sex reassignment surgery; a welfare board; public toilets specifically for TGs (but this is laden with controversy). It’s funny how in India, there is much more acceptance of TGs than gays and lesbians, but in the U.S., it’s the complete opposite. Despite TG support, gay/bi/lesbian/kothi/f2m issues lack attention in India.
• attending the Koovagam festival in Tamil Nadu, where I saw thousands of aravanis and kothis embark on this small town to symbolically marry-and-widow the god Aravan at the temple, a festival where massive amounts of sex happen between the local men and the aravanis/kothis, where major HIV/AIDS agencies sponsor beauty pageants and other events
• the homophobic and heterosexist stance among some members of the trans community who believe that if you’re a man and you’re attracted to other men, then you should become a woman like them. It’s wrong to remain a man if you love men.
• Integrating myself into the queer community in various parts of India: volunteering at the Bangalore Queer Film Festival and forming lasting bonds with queer activists there; befriending queer activists while in Mumbai and having the older ones share with me their histories, frustrations, and joys of the city’s queer activism over so many years; being a part of Chennai’s emerging gay/kothi/aravani/queer community
• Observing the grassroots work my NGO and other HIV/AIDS NGOs in Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai do with kothis, aravanis , and female sex workers around prevention, counseling, advocacy, police harassment, and empowerment
• Seeing men everywhere being physically affectionate with each other in public as a normal part of male bonding culture – holding hands, playful touches. The prevalence of men having sex with other men, including while married (and many kothi-identifying men are married).
• Observing the courageous work of my friends at the Lotus sangam performing street plays in villages to sensitize elected officials and residents on the harassment and issues that kothis face
• Sharing with my NGO colleagues my views on and experiences with queer activism and the culture of gender nonconformity and sexual orientation in the U.S., answering their questions, and hearing their experiences working with MSM and female sex workers in Tamil Nadu over the years
• Counseling and being an ongoing resource to a man who called my NGO and wants to become a woman, and is sexually attracted to other women, but who doesn’t see any examples of lesbian trans women in India.
• Being in India while the battle against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code – which criminalizes homosexuality – has been fought in the Delhi High Court. Some of my friends here have been on the team fighting the case, and I’m inspired by their determination, by the determination of the community nationwide, to fight this unjust and archaic law handed down to us by the British Raj. The community is waiting to hear the final verdict. Will same-sex love no longer be criminal in India?

These conversations and experiences have been sporadic. They’ve only made up, unfortunately, a small portion of my time here when compared to how many days I’ve been in India since September. But I feel like I’ve been able to learn and see and attach myself to a lot of aspects of India’s sexual minority community and its realities that most people don’t get a chance to know (or choose to ignore), including many people who’ve lived here their whole lives.

There’s of course so much more to experience and understand, so much more growing to do. But it’s a start. In so many ways, I really haven’t utilized my time in India well at all. And certain parts of my fellowship have been unfulfilling, primarily my work at my NGO, but that’s my fault. I made mistakes and learned some important lessons about myself and my M.O, while working at my NGO. There were moments here and there at my NGO when things were going great and I felt full of energy and enthusiasm and hope and productivity, and then there was so much time when I felt low and frustrated and unproductive and uninspired and pissed. And again, I take full responsibility for that; I really can’t blame anyone or anything but myself for that. Although my NGO really needs to improve significant aspects of its management, it is still probably one of the best and most-respected NGOs in the country, especially in the HIV/AIDS sector. It has been doing great work for two decades,. I just didn’t approach my time here in a way that tapped into its strengths; hindsight is 20/20, so of course now I see what I could have done differently to have had a more rewarding time with my NGO work. But as a whole, I can say that this fellowship really has been fulfilling. I’ve been able to discover my love for this country, my love for working internationally, the investment I have in social change in this motherland. I’ve developed a real life for myself here. From this period as a Fellow I’ve been able to build a relationship with this place, its citizens, and the complicated gears that make it tick. India will now always be a part of my thoughts, my visions, my actions, my motivation. India’s now my boo. ☺ And as I march down the streets of Chennai with my queer comrades, voices booming, hearts engorged with exhilaration (and some with fear), history being made, I’ll feel like the luckiest man, having been able to achieve a long-standing goal of mine that started when I was in college – to be in India and become a part of the country’s queer movement.

To my fabulous Fellows of 08-09, I love you all and will miss you dearly. I’m so glad that we are now in each other’s lives. I’m truly inspired by your dedication, selflessness, warm hearts, talent, and brilliance. Love, respect, and solidarity always, Prev

Why I Never Learned to Cook Indian Food: A List of Three Excuses, by Joy Mischley

2009-06-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Excuse #1: “I Work for the Youth Center”

The Deep Griha Youth Center is located in a building with many other Deep Griha projects, including a nutrition program. This means that we have a fabulous cook who prepares delicious food every day. Early on in the fellowship, I remember thinking that if I were to make a significant contribution in a short 10 months, I would have to focus my attention just on my assigned project with the youth center and not get distracted by all the other activities. This meant that I stayed out of the NGO kitchen, kept my distance from the day care children, and watch the medical checkups from afar. This strategy of “isolation”, though based on noble intentions, means that I don’t know how to cook dal, can’t address the lovely day care teachers by name, and haven’t learned the first thing about medical problems in Indian slums.

Lesson: As the AIF Fellowship draws to a close, I’m simply not ready. I want another chance to learn to merge my agenda with the realities of where I am. Whether imagined or reality, I felt that I was supposed to do something significant with the fellowship. With just ten months to make social progress in a new culture, the pressure I put on myself actually got in the way and limited the contributions that I could have made. Unconsciously, I had defined “significant” as a product, piece of research, or some chunk of work that someone could point to and say “Joy did that”. Now, I wish that I had left my ego aside and enjoyed the freedom of simply serving and relating. The next time I feel the pressure of a time-limited situation I am actually going to slow down, diversify my scope, and learn to cook.

Excuse #2: “I Only Have a One-Burner Electric Stove”

My landlord didn’t want to fight with the bureaucratic process of getting a gas permit and service for my flat. I was afraid that I would blow up the apartment if I used gas to cook. Thus, I have one electric plate that plugs into the wall. In an effort to justify my laziness, I often tell myself that I can’t possibly be expected to learn to cook Indian food with just one burner, and an electric one at that!

Lesson: To me, one of the best things about living and working in India is the opportunity to be creative with what I have. Being here in a semi-permanent state has meant that I don’t invest in a proper cloth for my coffee table. Instead, I use an extra pillowcase to cover up the ugly tabletop. Jars, formally filled with pasta sauce or jelly, become elegant glasses from which to serve guests. Old saris become colorful awnings, protecting my terrace from the sun. This ingenuity and creativity is present all over India. Newspaper is used to entertain small children with folding exercises, dancing games, and may other activities. It is used to wrap food for takeaway, to wipe down tables, and to practice tailoring designs and techniques. Using what is available is a way of life. Not cooking Indian food because I only have one burner? Not an excuse…

Excuse #3: “Indian Food Requires Too Many Spices”

One day I set out to the store to buy ingredients for pindi chole. Full of determination, I started collecting the various spices I would need. Each time I made another circle around the spice section in the store, my sense of empowerment took a beating. With eight ingredients in my shopping basket and another eight to find, my sense of the impossibility of the impending culinary task took over and I started returning items to the shelves.

Lesson: I often forget that learning something new requires support, teachers, coaches, and encouragement. We are selected for the Service Corps because we have previously been successful in school and in work. This “record of success” has made me reluctant to try something where I may fail or to ask for help in learning something new. Faced with the idea that I “should” be successful, I forget my humanness – the joy at simply trying, the opportunity to share a good laugh over a burned meal, and the chance to both receive and give help.

-Joy Mischley

“So, how was India?”, by Carolyn Florey

2009-06-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

This question is impossible to answer. Having lived abroad before, I’ve received it a number of times (insert relevant country/city). There are long and short answers to these friendly queries, helping me to really figure out what I did for the past ten months, why I originally came to India, and why India will always be a part of my life, a port of call, a home.

Because I will return to living in Washington, DC, a city notorious for unabashed networking young professionals, I expect meetings with new and old acquaintances will eventually uncover that I lived in India for the past year. Sometimes attention spans are short and intentions disingenuous in our nation’s capital. The long answers are reserved for those special people who probably wouldn’t inquire about my job as their first or second question anyway. But I digress. I imagine conversations to unfold as follows…

New friend: Wow. India. How was that?
(short answer) Me: It was great. Thanks.
(long answer) Me: India is a country of fascinating juxtapositions and extremes, confluence, confusion, chaos, culture, spirituality, wealth and beauty. I lived in India for only ten months and expect that after living there for ten years I would still not be privy to the inner workings of the Indian mind and culture.

New friend: So what did you do in India?
(short answer) Me: I worked at a women’s rights NGO in Delhi.
(long answer) Me: I was an American India Foundation Service Corps Fellow (for eight months) and a Clinton Fellow (for two months). I worked with a human rights organization called Breakthrough, whose India office focuses on women’s rights, specifically gender and sexuality, reproductive and sexual health, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination, using “edutainment” (media education) as a platform for social awareness campaigns. I was mainly responsible for communications collateral and producing training materials.

In my spare time, I traveled extensively throughout the country, took approximately 2,948,7592,875 pictures, practiced kickboxing, attended one yoga session and found breathing out one nostril at a time silly and booger-inducing, discovered the wonders of tailored clothing, took Hindi lessons yet am still unable to read Devanagari, read a lot of books, drank a lot of chai, learned to live without air conditioning (and thus hopefully never take it for granted again), got engaged, met some truly quality individuals, and as our Program Manager instructed us at orientation, learned to embrace the boredom.

New friend: Why did you go to India?
(short answer) Me: I love chicken tikka.
(long answer) Me: I had worked at what in common parlance is known as "The Bank" for about two and a half years at a small grants program called the Development Marketplace (DM). A large part of my work at the DM was monitoring small-scale, innovative projects; I interfaced with inspiring social entrepreneurs from around the world. Feeling as though there was a disconnect between my work at the Bank and on-the-ground implementation, I applied for this fellowship to bridge that gap in my experience.

New friend: And how did that work out for you?
(short answer) Me: It was a good learning experience.
(long answer) Me: It did and didn’t. My work at the DM was far more substantive and although I was working in a headquarters in Washington, DC, I felt like I was having more of a “development impact” in my job there. I was told by my colleagues in India multiple times that I was being underutilized, an appreciated comment and recognition, but disheartening nonetheless.

So I reached out to other organizations in India in my spare time - wrote grant proposals for a sustainable energy NGO based in Hyderabad and did some research for an education technology company in Delhi to supplement the work I am doing at Breakthrough. Tried to make it work. Tim Gunn would be proud.

But living in India and working in an Indian NGO were invaluable experiences. I was the only foreigner in my office of thirteen people, ten of whom are women (the two accountants and the office assistant are the only men). I worked with empowered, independent women who have a true passion to advance human rights throughout India and hope to tackle issues such as religion, caste, and peace and conflict in the future.

New friend: Do you think you will go back?
(short answer) Me: Of course.
(long answer) Me: Hopefully, I will be able to go back to India, not only to visit, but also perhaps to live and work. India is a country that grabs hold of the imagination, the senses and the intellect in a way that I have not experienced in any other country. It is a frightfully frustrating place; the highs and lows are extreme and can happen within two minutes of each other, but the entrepreneurial spirit and hopes for the future are undaunted by the vast and deep inequalities that continue to handicap a large percentage of the population. I am forever tied to this vivid country; I will be back.

Only in India, by Pooja Bhatia

2009-06-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Only in India...

...can people pronounce my name better than I can.

...will a Catholic woman step aside so that a Sikh can be sworn in as Prime Minister by a Muslim President in a country where more than 80% of the population is Hindu (Thank you, Namaste London).

...can the worst hour of one’s life be followed by the best hour of one's life.

...can people be so very concerned with cleanliness that they take off their shoes before entering their homes and broom and mop twice a day but throw their trash directly into their own backyard.

...can an NGO not know to speak proper English or how to use the Internet but have the best looking website and NGO brochure ever.

...can a home-cooked meal express so much love.

...can a person go to a club and be charged a 2500 Rs. cover charge while 75% of the population lives on less than 25 Rs. per day.

...can after 9 months of having lived in a place a person still cannot correctly pronounce the name of the city she lives in.

...can people claim that they are passionate about humanity, doing social work and equality, yet continue to carry out the age-old tradition of the caste system and commit human rights violations on a day-to-day basis.

...can the majority of people think eating cow is sacrilegious to the Hindu religion but wearing cow leather belts and shoes is not.

...can a person accidently miss her bus stop from Ahmedabad to Udaipur because she fell sound asleep on the sleeper bus, forgot to set an alarm and wake up in a panic and run to the driver who calmly says “We passed Udaipur 2 hours ago” to which she responds with a “Ahhhhhh! WHAT?” and he responds with “It’s okay, don’t worry” and stops the next bus going in the opposite direction and tells her to jump on.

...can men who know all the words and dance moves to every Bollywood song be considered super cool.

...can a person buy a vehicle (pink Scooty what what!) without a valid driver’s license... and then be told there is no need for her to get a license because police officers don’t stop women anyway.

...can a person get dirty looks for walking down the street in a sleeveless shirt but women strutting around with their tummies hanging out is completely acceptable.

....can a person meet extended family members that she’s never met before and feel like she’s known them her whole entire life.

...can people think sacrificing a goat in front of a temple is a symbol of peace and an expression of non-violence.

...can a person bribe a bus driver 20 Rs. so she can get off the bus to go to the bathroom... because there are no bathrooms on Indian buses and the driver has already stopped once for her just a few hours earlier.

...can a Punjabi girl living with a Bihari family in Chhattisgarh try and speak to her relatives in Delhi in what she thinks is Hindi but actually turns out to be a combination of 4 different languages (Punjabi, Hindi, Bihari, and Chhattisgarhi).

...can a person move to a town as a total stranger and leave having become part of a whole new family that she feels like she can’t live without.

Only in India.

- Pooja Bhatia

Musings and Doodles, by Tahmid Chowdhury

2009-05-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

-Tahmid Chowdhury

Rock the Vote, by Hamsa Subramaniam

2009-04-17T04:53:00.000-07:00

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics

is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato

It was almost unbearable for me to be away from Washington, DC during the elections this year. I remember when I was in third grade, Ms. Bukaty told us that voting was a privilege and since then I have always taken an extra effort to participate in my political process. I remember being 18 years old and campaigning for Howard Dean in the dead of winter during the Iowa caucuses, and again for Barack Obama during the Virginia and Maryland primaries. I have canvassed, phone-banked and stuffed envelopes. I have participated in voter registration drives and will never back out of a political conversation.

Now that the Indian elections are fast approaching, I am saddened to find apathy, defeat and disinterest. Living in India as a Service Corps Fellow for eight months, I have been privy to numerous discussions about how the BJP discriminates against non-Hindus and how Congress caters to Muslims and other minorities unfairly. I’ve heard grumbling about how sleazy politicians give the uneducated poor a bottle of liquor and a free meal to buy campaign peons and ultimately votes. Lunchtime conversation at SAATHII reveals that many people feel disenfranchised because they are unable to vote for someone they believe in, someone who will keep promises, someone who will actually serve the public instead of filling their own coffers.

My 16 year-old cousin said that she and her friends think that Indian politics won’t change until young, energetic politicians with new ideas and a fresh perspective oust the dynastic politics that has gripped many regions in India. “We need someone who will realize that [young people] have voices too. We need someone who will sacrifice for the Indian people as opposed to caring just for their own religion and caste.”

I see on a regular basis political parties in Tamil Nadu choosing a candidate to stand for election based on the caste most represented in his constituency to gain votes. In one election, the chosen candidate then quoted the famous Tamil poet Barathiyar, professing on the dais, “Caste does not exist in Tamil Nadu, my children.” Is this a display of calculated hypocrisy, or merely symptomatic of an India that is still far from gaining a sense of national unity and citizenship? Those I have spoken with in India feel that caste should be maintained as an important cultural marker and an enforcer of shared values and customs, while not reverting back to the rigid caste hierarchy of the past and its accompanying system of overt discrimination. From my observations however, this has resulted into what has become either cultural discouragement of lawful actions (such as inter-caste marriage), or laws that administer to castes inequitably (e.g., reverse affirmative action often precluding Brahmins acceptance to college).

This is just one example. These are the kinds of incongruities which cause frustration among those who are aware of what is at stake.

At the end of the day, while India has on average, a higher voter-turnout than the United States (60.7% versus 48.3% according to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), those Indians whose votes cannot be bought – those who are educated – end up not voting. However, this group of people also tend to be the ones who have ideas, who have a vision, who know what a government should be like. No matter how naïve, “western” or futile it may seem, voting is both a right and a privilege that so many in the world lack. As Plato points out, the direction of Indian politics has so far been dictated by the poor who cannot help but look to politicians for a free meal and cash, as opposed to social change. And many politicians give their public what they want to get votes. Free televisions. Free booze. Free meals.

The educated must hold government responsible for their actions, even if it means choosing the lesser of two evils for now. Politicians should be at the mercy of those who elect them. The onus for social change is on people like us who can afford to think about the future, instead of putting food on the table tonight. I have started this conversation many times with my co-workers and I encourage the other AIF fellows to do the same – talk to your Indian co-workers, families and friends about voting, lest the future of Indian politics continues to rest solely on Plato’s inferior.

Rock the Indian vote.

- Hamsa Subramaniam

Where are the Women? Finding Leadership, by Clara Presler

2009-04-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

It is from the rickshaw that I do much of my observing of Delhi. The long stretches of kilometers that run through back alleys and over six-lane flyovers are not always conducive to foot travel. But a rickshaw grants you much of the same physical sensation as walking and the rides are never dull: I overhear snippets of conversations between drivers pausing at streetlights, catch a whiff of the chai sipped by groggy taxi drivers or a glimpse of families preparing for the day. I see a city constantly at work: the same kids clamor at my side each day selling magazines, the dhobis teeter on their bicycles amidst traffic with oversized loads, the government Ambassador cars and the blue-plated SUVs of the United Nations whiz by authoritatively.

But these daily rickshaw rides offer more than sensory exposure and a series of near-accidents. They provide constant fodder for my work at Center for Social Research, the NGO with which I have been working since January. The relevancy of Delhi’s street life to my project stems from the under-representation of one group: the women.

At the Center for Social Research, a 25-year-old women’s rights organization, I have been asked to author a leadership training manual for women aspiring to enter politics. Currently there is a pending bill that would establish a 33 percent reservation for women in state legislatures and Parliament. The course I am writing aims to mobilize women around political issues and empower them to see themselves as leaders. Our long-term goal—beyond providing women with information and training they may lack—is to pressure the government to pass the reservation bill through the voices of new women leaders.

When this project was first proposed to me, I hesitated. On the one hand, it had all the right elements: it was timely and stimulating, and would likely put me in contact with a wide cross section of society. On the other hand, I thought of the divisiveness of similar debates in the US and my role as a foreigner. I asked myself, “in my short time in Delhi, do I really want to enter into a debate as fierce and complex as something resembling affirmative action and quotas?”

Then I thought about my rickshaw rides through the streets and the teeming crowds: if there are so few women in daily public spaces, what would move them decide to run for political office, perhaps the ultimate of public positions? My curiosity peaking, I suspected the debate might be very different in India.

I decided to turn outward. I contacted academics and NGOs, attended public debates, and spoke, through a translator, to local leaders. Through a series of interviews, I learned that the question of reservations in India, while just as lively and fierce as in the US, has a different starting point. Few dispute the disadvantage that certain social groups face in Indian society, particularly the lower castes and women. Reservations for lower castes are deeply entrenched in public sector institutions. The debate around reservations for women concerns what we would think are the finer details but here, in such a populous and layered society, are the crux: numbers and percentages, and whether to address caste issues within or apart from reservations for women.

But it was not always this way. During the writing of the Indian Constitution, many leaders from disadvantaged groups felt that reservations were a way of ‘institutionalizing inequality’ and vehemently opposed them. The hope of unity and equality was too great. Sarojini Naidu, one of the most famous women leaders of India wrote: “To seek any form of preferential treatment would be to violate the integrity of the universal demand of Indian women for absolute equality of political status. We are confident that no untoward difficulties will intervene in the way of women.”

That was 1950. In 1993, India’s Constitution was amended to establish a one-third reservation for women at local (panchayat) level government; as I mentioned, there is a pending bill to do the same for state and Parliamentary legislatures. Some women question whether these bills will bring about the radical shift in gender roles we hope for. Generally, though, the women’s movement is supportive. So what changed?

Towards Equality, a report published in 1974 by the Commission on the Status of Women in India, suggested that independence had not created the opportunities for women that the writers of the Constitution had hoped. The Committee claimed that its field studies showed that the status of women had actually deteriorated in the preceding decades and called for stronger legislature and grassroots mobilization. Towards Equality galvanized the women’s movement; the report is considered to be one of its founding texts.

Addressing the breakdown between ideals and reality for women in Indian society in a way that is accurate yet empowering has been my primary focus in preparing this course. Ideals—progressive legislation, success stories—will play a crucial role in drawing women into the public sphere in greater numbers. We rely on the ideals to chip away at the harsh realities:

Men, Money, Muscle-power: the typical phrase used to describe Indian politics. Violence: against candidates and their families, against young women in pubs, against women at home. The exorbitant price of party tickets and the shady deals required to pay for them. The proxy debate, suggesting that reservations for women simply encourage men to put their wives forward to represent their interests.

The list of factors that could repel women from the public sphere and political leadership goes on and on.

The next set of questions I seek to address in this course concern the definition and cultivation of leadership: once a woman has decided to hold on to ideals and work to effect change in her surroundings, what does she need? What information and skills will encourage women and prepare them for leadership?

Parts of this answer are universal; many others are locally-specific. I have learned that the only way I can write an effective and relevant course to Indian women is to listen. Each individual I have spoken to has added to the definition and message of the course. Listening has deepened my ideas about politics, leadership, and women’s empowerment, sometimes casting them in a new light. Interviews with certain individuals, men and women, have been particularly instructive:

Sumitra, a woman who has contested two local village elections entered politics through her work in domestic violence. A survivor of violence herself, she became a local councilor and entered politics in order to be more effective in her work preventing violence. She has proven to me that the personal is political.

Atul, a PhD student at Nehru University, contested elections in his home district in northwest Bihar. He went door-to-door, introduced himself to his constituents, and listened to them in their homes. He lost, but received many more votes than expected. As a result, the opposition murdered his brother. Yet Atul plans to run again, showing that scare tactics are not universally effective.

Rheka counsels women experiencing domestic violence. She is fierce in her defense of her clients’ rights and radiates as she works. But she does not advocate total independence; instead reconciliation. She has shown me the ways in which a woman finds power is often relative to her surroundings.

Pallavi leads the student government at Nehru University. She was never interested in politics before she moved to Delhi from Bihar. At JNU she looked to her seniors for guidance, informed herself of the issues, and chose a party. She has shown me that, with strong mentors, an interest in politics can be cultivated, and that a community in which to learn is vital.

My friends from the States who have led wilderness trips spoke to me at length about activities and consciousness-raising exercises that encourage new leaders. They have convinced me that leaders are not necessarily natural-born; instead, most traits can be turned into a leadership skill. Knowing and listening to your own strengths is the first step towards leadership.

I have started to see women leaders all around me. A woman I met last week at a domestic violence counseling center is filing a case against her husband while going to college and raising her child. My flatmate, a head editor at a magazine, turns on a dime from relaxing at home to making quick decisions on her phone. I am part of a vibrant running group organized by one community-minded woman who didn’t feel safe running alone. I think back to the self-help groups I visited while at my previous placement in Tamil Nadu, and the crucial role the women held in managing their families’

finances.

It is clear that my rickshaw rides and newspapers only tell part of the story. Women are scarce on the streets of Delhi; they comprise only 8 percent of the Lok Sabha. Off the streets women are organizing, taking charge of their lives, and reaching out to others. The goal of the one-third reservation bill is to bring this grassroots action to the public. To represent and facilitate women-focused leadership in politics. To change the way political leadership looks.

I like to think that Sarojini Naidu would be appeased to consider that perhaps reservations are not a negative reflection of women’s capabilities. Reservations instead recognize the barriers between the public and the private spheres and the social structures that reinforce them. Instead of ‘institutionalizing inequality’, reservations could actually recognize leadership potential and carve out doorways through the barriers. The doors will still be hard to open and women will need a good reason to push. But as more women step through and leave the doors open behind them, the reasons will become more numerous and barriers increasingly porous.

- Clara Presler

Portraits of Bangalore, by Meera Sinha

2009-04-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

For my AIF Fellowship, I’ve been placed with Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) in Bangalore. AYV is a global initiative aimed to empower underserved youth using digital tools such as video, digital art, and photography. The Bangalore AYV program is running in 10 government-run high schools and 5 slum-focused NGOs. At each site, my coworkers and I run hands-on video production classes. The documentaries are entirely student-produced, meaning the youth develop the story, shoot the footage, and edit the final videos themselves. Each class of 30 students will have produced one documentary film and one photo essay by the end of April. Amongst others, this year’s project topics include slum life, electricity wastage, and elders’ childhood memories.

My fellowship has been incredibly rewarding because of the people that have shaped it. For this blog post, I’ll highlight a few of these characters.

Chandan

Chandan and me

Each AIF Service Corps Fellow is paired with a mentor, a work colleague meant to guide and support throughout the 10-month fellowship. My mentor, Chandan, has become my India flagship: my day-to-day work companion, my window into local Bangalore life, my close friend.

The day begins, and I’m riding on the back of Chandan’s motorbike, past tea stalls, malls, offices, slums, gardens, garbage, mansions, street vendors; alongside rickshaws, buses, cows, cars, bikes; on roads that are dirt, paved, rocky, full of potholes; beside office-goers, beggars, school children, construction workers, shoppers, dog-walkers, wanderers. The wind is on our faces.

I find myself in an old Bangalore neighborhood, at the end of a quiet street: Chandan’s home. I slip off my sandals and enter the casual, comfortable space. To my right, the Kannada news blares on the TV. To my left, Chandan’s brother, seated in front of an altar, prays. Chandan and I sit on the floor in his office and work. Between work, we talk about everything under the sun: family, graduate school, life in the US, Gandhi, the future, our students. Something small tips us off, and we start laughing hysterically: our sides ache, we can’t breathe, it is the kind of laughter that is raw and rich, that doesn’t really ever cease.

Chandan’s mother calls us for lunch. She cooks the best South Indian food I’ve tasted, and I tell her so. We smile, we talk, she tells me to eat more. In his booming voice, Chandan’s father asks when we’re going to get dosas again, when we’ll make our way to our favorite hole-in-the-wall joint, where neither the décor nor the perfect, secret recipe has changed for 70 years.

In the evening, Chandan, his cousins, and I go to a concert. We sit in a small hall as the sounds of the tabla, sitar, and flute surround us. I marvel at the technicality of the Indian classical music. Chandan and his cousins sing along, sigh in unison, tap their fingers to the intricate beat.

Chandan has made me comfortable with a family-centric, local side of Bangalore that I would not otherwise easily know as a foreigner. Much more than a work mentor, Chandan is a friend who has connected me to this chaotic, intriguing city.

Mubeen

Mubeen in her neighborhood

I’ve had the pleasure of learning from and growing close to my students. Take, for example, Mubeen, a fiery, 17-year-old Muslim girl. She led her class in making a documentary about the differences between the ways female and male children are treated in her community. Her academic determination stems largely from her single mother’s support.

Recently, Mubeen invited me to her home. Her five-person family lives in a house with a modest living room, one tiny bedroom, and a small corner kitchen. There is no proper plumbing, and there is one light in the living room.

When I arrived, Mubeen’s mother seated me on the couch, pinched me on the cheeks, and served me fruit custard, mutton biryani, tea, and biscuits. The two of them showed me family photos. They asked me questions I’ve come to find normal here in India: What are your education qualifications? Are you married? (My response followed by a look of shock, and then: Why not? But how old are you?!) What is your father’s name? What religion are you? Are you really Indian? You look too American!

These questions, I gather, place me in the tricky Indian social web, the framework that defines – to be blunt – who falls “above” whom.

In a small way, my time at Mubeen’s home tears away at that web. She and I are pulling at a strand and throwing it away. We’re messing up the system.

As we sat drinking tea, Mubeen put it this way: “Meera Madam, I feel so happy that you came to my house. You see, in India, I am very low, very poor, a Muslim. People know me this way. People like you don’t come to see people like me. They don't come into the homes of poors.” She continued, gesturing. “You see, you are water, and I am color. Colored powder. Usually the water wants to stay clean, clear. But you know that if you add me, the water becomes something else, something nice, with color. Like green water, or black water.”

Karthik

Students shooting their film

My students have featured all kinds of people in their films: slum-dwellers, parents, shopkeepers, peers, teachers, activists, etc. These characters’ stories are glimpses into this city and into my students’ minds.

An example: at Christel House India, a privately funded school for slum children, the youth based their film’s main character on one of themselves, a boy named Karthik. Because their film dealt with a sensitive topic – Karthik’s poor relationship with his parents – they decided to scrap the documentary medium and create a fictional account. Out of this vision came a fictionalized version of Karthik, a teenage slum-dweller whose parents neglect and beat him. Instead of being consumed by his family problems, Karthik delves into his studies, leaning on his peers, his teachers, and his education to support him.

Initially, I struggled with Karthik. I didn’t understand why the students wanted to turn his story into fiction. Wouldn’t a documentary be more powerful and direct? One of the Christel House teachers explained that the topic was touchier than I grasped. In reality, Karthik’s father is an alcoholic and can’t hold a job to support his family. His mother has therefore turned to prostitution, which has created marital tension in their home. In the midst of it all, they are neglecting and abusing their son. The teacher told me to think about Karthik’s position: his parents might see the film and get angry about their portrayal, his peers might look down on him for his family problems, and he himself might find the issues too difficult to talk about on camera. I realized that fiction is a solid, healthy way for the students to express and deal with such situations.

My struggle continued, though, during film production. There were too many aspects of the film I didn’t understand: Is Karthik dreaming or is this real? Is the film becoming melodramatic? Shouldn’t Karthik’s actions have defined motivations behind them? Why isn’t this clear?

Again, my students’ perspectives slowly sunk in. What was spilling out on camera, in all of its murkiness and abstraction, was their perspective. And that’s what my work in India is all about: allowing youth who may not always have a voice – or whose voice may be suppressed because people like me don’t understand it or give it a chance – to express, to have some freedom, to feel proud of their voices. (Later, one of the students told me that his friend started crying when he saw the film, confirmation that the story touches these kids’ lives.)

Like the youth, I am proud of the final Christel House video. I hope that the students learned half as much from me as I learned from them during the filmmaking process. The video:

Balram & Barack

One of the video topics proposed by

students during a brainstorming session

Living in Bangalore has inspired me to read about India in hopes of understanding what makes her tick. Simultaneously, given the US’s fresh administration change this past November, I’ve avidly been reading more about my own country. The intersection of this reading brings me to my final two characters: Balram and Barack.

I’m currently in the middle of The White Tiger, Aravind Adigas’s biting novel about the relationship between an Indian chauffeur, Balram, and his “master,” Ashok. During his journey from his village to Delhi, Balram explores India’s quiet acceptance of a social structure that allows for blatant (and at times horrifying) social inequalities to exist.

I’m also in the midst of Barack Obama’s second novel, The Audacity of Hope. What a contrast to be reading the two in parallel.

Speaking to the idea of common American values, Obama writes, “… The essential idea behind the Declaration – that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can’t be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make our lives what we will – is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day. Indeed, the value of individual freedom is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted.” (p. 53)

Could such a blanket statement be written about India? I would answer no. India has taken the “essential idea” that frames my world and shaken it up, pushed it this way and that, turned it on its head. Each time I think the idea has settled into a version applicable to India, it once again gets rustled up – flipped over so that it’s not what I thought it was. It is at once stimulating and frustrating to live in a country where my perspective is constantly challenged.

In The White Tiger, Balram often points out the strange contradictions that define his relationship with his master. At one moment, Ashok is calling Balram a “good, family man,” patting him on the back, giving him a little extra cash. The next moment, he’s cursing him for the stupidity that characterizes his “people.” On one hand, Ashok treats Balram “well” by paying him 3,000 rupees a month (US $60). On the other hand, he finds it normal that Balram is living below his fancy apartment in a tiny room infested with cockroaches. And the reverse as well: Balram scorns Ashok for seeking out a prostitute after his divorce, but yearns to sleep with one himself. He admires Ashok’s thoughtfulness, his composure, yet he steals money from him.

Some explain India’s contradictory character by way of the caste system, others by way of the Western influence that is quickly pervading, others by way of the clash between urban development and a population that lives and works largely in rural settings, and others by way of religion.

Too often, though, these reasons are followed by, “But that’s just the way it is in India,” as if the reasons are the end of a tunnel, shut behind a locked door, etched into cement. Too often I hear people say “Oh, but if you talk to people in the slums, you’ll find that they’re actually happy!” (Right, tell that to the slum-dweller my students interviewed whose child is dying of a sickness she doesn’t recognize, the same one who said, “Just show me a way to a better lifestyle, and I’ll take it!”)

Misuse of government funds could explain India’s staggering contradictions (one of the most obvious being that while India’s economic growth rate is 6-8%, 43% of children under age 5 are still malnourished). But what drives the mentality – the lack of values, in my mind – that allows this extent of government corruption to exist? Where is India’s sense of social responsibility? The idea of social responsibility may be a concept “Western” in nature, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t apply to India.

I’m not yet at a point in my work, in my studies, or in my historical understanding of India to comment on why India is such a confusing, conflicting country. What I can reflect on are moments. Walking to work and seeing a child splashing, playing in what is literally a sewage drain. Watching a woman, half my size and shoeless, lifting bricks to build a shopping mall she won’t be allowed to enter. Seeing a hunched-over vegetable vendor getting barked at (it’s a matter of tone) to gather the “right” tomatoes and place them one by one in his client’s shiny car.

An instant answer, I know, is unfathomable. What I hope for, though, is a change in mentality, some sort of awakening in the minds of everyday people, so that we stop looking around and saying “But that’s just the way it is in India” and start asking why, start feeling a bit unsettled, start seeing things through Balram’s eyes, start searching for a belief in values, the way Obama so relentlessly does.

-Meera Sinha
www.meerasinha.wordpress.com

Only In The Movies, by Rick Desai

2009-03-02T05:01:00.000-08:00

Despite winning Hollywood’s highest awards, Slum Dog Millionaire did not impress many in India. In fact, it was found offensive. The criticism came from all sides. As Amitabh Bachchan, a Bollywood icon, rationalized: “If Slumdog Millionaire projects as a Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” Indian media stated that had it been an Indian, and not the British Danny Boyle, that made the movie, the West wouldn't have loved the Indian subplot, which they claimed was simply “not believable.” Slum residents in Mumbai boycotted the movie by raiding theaters, protesting that they were humans, not dogs. And my closest family living in India said that the movie grossly misrepresented the real India.

An Ahmedabad slum which lacks electricity, sewage systems and infrastructure.

Working for Saath, an NGO focused on slum development, for the past six months has allowed me to see glimpses of the real India. I live in Ahmedabad, a city seemingly immune to the global recession. Here, instead of foreclosure signs and empty shopfronts, you see construction on mega malls and highways proceeding apace. But this local and national economic boom has allowed the mainstream to disguise, rather than bring attention to, the condition of the urban poor. As Ahmedabad expands, the wealthy move farther away from the slums, and the urban poor simply continue to go unnoticed, out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, this same expansion is actually accelerating slum growth. Economic development has ushered in new livelihood opportunities, and rural migrants from adjacent states are flooding the city. Unfortunately, the city is not prepared (and has never been) to accommodate the influx; a lack of information regarding basic services, employment, and housing forces migrants to the slums. And so the cycle of deprivation continues for the urban poor.

Regardless of the discrepancy between how the film was received internationally and in India, Slum Dog has brought much-needed attention to the scourge of urban poverty. This, in the face of many Indians still living in denial about the poverty in their midst. During a meeting with a domestic Indian call center last week, we mentioned that 40 percent of Ahmedabad’s population lives in slums. Partly shocked and partly embarrassed, the call center manager admitted that even after living here for 15 years, he thought the slums represented, at most, 5 percent of the population.

"Raise your hands if you like school!" Children in the Behrampura slum.

For the past 20 years, Saath has specifically targeted, rather than ignored, the urban poor. Hindi for “together”, Saath recognizes the 4.5 million living in slums as a market – a market of consumers and producers. I work with Saath's vocational training program, Umeed. Despite a national population exceeding a billion people, Ahmedabad’s service sector is still in need of labor. As such, we train slum youth in computers, conversational language and customer service. The students are school dropouts currently unemployed or selling street food or driving rickshaws that are looking for security and consistency. We then find them jobs at restaurants, call centers and hotels; jobs in the formal and organized sector. The premise is similar to the hiring practices we utilized in investment banking—mentality and attitude can be even more indicative of success than background.

A developed slum where SAATH helped slum residents prove that they are capable and willing to pay for infrastructure and electricity. Improved slums and increased sales for the private sector, a win win.

Based on my past experience in finance, part of my work has been to make the model sustainable through micro lending and corporate payments, especially as international foundation dollars dry up in the midst of the global economic crisis. As such, we conduct meetings with potential employers, like the aforementioned call center, with the hope of, first, for them to hire our students, and second, for them to pay for our services so we can reinvest in the training. Encouragingly, the private sector is responding. As long as their employees are capable, the private sector and general market does not—and should not—care about where they come from. Now the goal is to change the mindset of the rest of mainstream India.

(from left to right) A BPO class at Umeed; a new call center employee; students in a cultural activity; my project - the Livelihood Resource Center.

The timid response so far, while not completely unexpected, has been surprising for its lack of focus and realism. To Mr. Bachchan's point above, America has poverty. And greed, corruption, racism, and war too. But we make movies that highlight our weaknesses. Hollywood is often our government's harshest critic. (Just look at Sean Penn).

I loved Slum Dog. It dealt with disturbing yet significant issues in India and portrayed images of survival and hope. Poverty is widespread, not just in slums but all over India; 70 percent of the country lives below 2.5 dollars a day. There are an estimated 250 million children working in the unorganized, informal sector—almost the equivalent of America’s entire population. Communal tensions remain prevalent in India. In 2002, riots ended with the killing of at least 800 Muslims across the Hindu-led state of Gujarat. Many of the Muslim slums Saath works in today are a byproduct of these riots.

Child Labourers Class.

Although directed by a Westerner, Slum Dog is based on the Vikas Swarup’s novel “Q&A” In fact, the Indian author jabs at the fanciful, over-the-top themes common in Bollywood. Thus, the “implausibility” of Slum Dog should have resonated with Bollywood viewers. The dramatic love affairs and Herculean fight scenes provide an escape for movie goers and this fantastic model has been replicated successfully, netting billions. But Slum Dog did not win over Indians; perhaps because the Indian mainstream did not identify with the character or did not want to confront their own ideologies.

Moreover, the claim that "only in the movies" could a slum kid win gameshow, is inherently discriminating. It presupposes that the urban poor are incapable of achieving or performing out of their given environments. These stereotypes push urban slums deeper into poverty and simply perpetuate an unacceptable status quo. Saath’s inclusive programs like Umeed (Hindi for hope) suggest a very different reality, with a more hopeful, sustainable future for the urban poor. Just last week, at a friend's wedding, I ran into Vijendra, a former Umeed student from the Vasna slum that I had helped train. In six months, he went from jobless to earning a respectable salary as a server for a wedding catering company.

After hearing about the protests of slum residents, a co-worker wondered out loud whether these people had actually seen the film or if someone had told them that they should be outraged. I showed the movie to residents of a nearby slum who are part of Saath’s Community Video Unit, a group of slum residents (men, women, Hindus, Muslims) that makes short films on social issues. Their unanimous response: “Masth” (Gujarati for best). They identified with the imagery of the film and found inspiration in Jamal's survival spirit. They loved the direction and music and thought both would be useful as they continue capturing slum issues in their movies.

Children from Surendranager.

On a personal level, I did not know how to respond to my family’s take on the film. We have politely argued before on sensitive issues like India’s poverty and communal relations. So when my cousin’s family did not like it, I was not surprised. But I did not argue with them. They have lived in and experienced India far longer than I have, and while I disagree with them, I respect their views.

However, afterward, my cousin’s nine year old daughter, Kanisha pulled me aside and told me the following story: “At school yesterday, our “Mam” (teacher) told us that she saw Slum Dog. She didn’t like it. She said it wasn’t a true image of India.” I started to interrupt her, but she stopped me and continued. “So today on the bus, me, Prutha and Janvi [her two best friends] called Mam to our seats. We were passing the same kind of area where you work, Ricky Bhai, and we told Mam to look out the window. We pointed to little kids sleeping on the street and said to her, ‘Mam, is this not also India?’”

- Rick Desai

http://findingrickshaw.wordpress.com

(from left to right) Ahmdedaba'd stepwells; Vijendra, a former Umeed student from the slums now working at weddings; a Kerala sunset; My family in India; AIF fellows in Ahmedabad.

Embracing Diversity in Perspectives, by Diego Solares

2009-02-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

Just the other day I arrived at the office to find a pile of faux-leather handbags strewn across the floor. Around the pile sat several women in Saris carefully applying brown paint onto a design printed on each bag. I picked up one of the finished products and was able to make out, underneath the fresh paint, an image of a woman holding a female condom with “Pleasure, Power, Respect” written underneath.

“Why are they painting over the design?” I asked one of my colleagues.

“Because we want to sell the bags to women in the community and they don’t like what it says. No one will buy them like this.”

“They’re embarrassed of it?” I asked.

“Huh, yes,” he responded with a smirk.

The early days of the AIDS pandemic taught us a costly lesson about the harms of sexual conservatism. Across the world, AIDS ravaged entire communities of sex workers and networks of men who have sex with men. Bureaucrats and the public alike cringed and giggled at talk of condoms and lubricant; almost as much as they condemned their lifestyles. But eventually, it was the activists, epidemiologists and health workers—tired of attending funerals and losing friends—that convinced enough people to engage in frank discussions about sex in the interest of saving lives.

It was this approach that led to significant reductions in HIV transmission in several countries. In Brazil, people dressed as enormous condoms paraded through Carnaval; and in Thailand, outdoor games that involved inflated condoms were introduced in villages. It desensitized the public to sex enough that it enabled a rise in condom use and the provision of progressive sex education.

Sex workers, however, face the additional challenges of abuse, exploitation and stigma-induced neglect. For this reason, several interventions in red light areas around the world paired discussions about sex with efforts to promote empowerment, human rights and the right to sex work. Before long, this “empowerment” model became one of many sacred cows in the field of global health; sacred cows that are, of course, never to be challenged. And so guidelines, pamphlets, t-shirts and handbags produced everywhere from Geneva and Bangkok to Washington D.C. and Stockholm were exported to red light areas in poor countries across the world. It became disadvantageous over time (especially with regards to fundraising) to resist these sorts of efforts.

I arrived in India six months ago a proponent of this school of thought. While I continue— perhaps even more than before—to appreciate the harms of sexual conservatism and moral policing, I have learned what a disservice to the community it could be to hush dissent, even when it dares to challenge a sacred cow.

Those handbags, cleansed of their provocative messages, were not the first example of this happening. Months ago, a popular organization focused on promoting the right to sex work visited Saheli to conduct a workshop on how to be more economically productive as a sex worker. The idea of promoting sex work so forthrightly horrified several of the attendees and the organization was never invited back.

Community participation is another sacred cow in global health, one that I am committed to furthering. And representativeness in programming, one of the purposes of ensuring participation, is achieved only through embracing community perspectives, diverse or unexpected as they may be.

The truth is that there are sex workers that are ashamed of what they do and embarrassed by the topic of sex. They may have been trafficked into sex work or simply pressured to enter the trade due to financial need; and because of stigma, illiteracy and debt bondage, leaving the trade is only a distant possibility.

This is why exporting empowerment in this community hasn’t worked. For one organization to represent a thousand sex workers is a daunting task, especially when where one stands on the issue is subject to an immense range of individual experiences. The controversial nature of sex work seems to have polarized debate. And when one side is poor and disenfranchised, power dynamics inadvertently silence dissent. At the end of the day, anti-prostitution arguments appear nuanced while “the sex worker perspective” appears simple.

As satisfying as it would have been to find myself at an organization committed to protecting the right to sex work, I am grateful for what I have learned at Saheli. And for all the community’s ideological divisions, it is united against AIDS. The challenge of AIDS drove the community to collectivize in 1996; and through it still lies an opportunity to improve the health and human rights of the community.

But until health and social welfare organizations discover a way to promote respect for individuals’ choices without compromising those with little choice in the matter, “empowerment handbags” will continue to be censored.

- Diego Solares

Roj Nishale Jaiye (We all go to school everyday), by Diane Coffey

2009-02-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Kutch! My name is Diane and I’ve spent the past five months living and working in a rural district of western Gujarat called Kutch. Though not physically separated from India, Kutch is often compared to an island. It is cut off from the rest of the state by water and by vast expanses of salty desert. It is also isolated in terms of language; most of the people speak Kucchi, an unwritten language spoken nowhere else in India. It is common for Indian government officials posted in Kutch to consider the region a “hardship” or a “punishment” posting.

While it is true that working in Kutch has left me feeling isolated, I have found Kutch to be the friendliest and most peaceful place I’ve ever lived. In addition, the landscape and the seascape are often downright stunning. Finally, it is a fascinating place to witness a variety of development issues from migration and industrialization to agriculture, water provision and education.

One of the most disadvantaged groups in the district is the seasonal migrant workers who come from in and around Kutch in search of a livelihood. Most of Kutch’s migrant workers are engaged in salt production, though smaller groups of migrants also engage in fishing, animal husbandry and other activities. The children of migrant workers have no access to formal education during the migration period.

The NGO with which I have been placed tries to establish schools at the sites where migrants live and work. During my time in Kutch, I have been involved in a project to improve attendance at the schools. It has provided me with the opportunity to work in the area of monitoring and evaluation. There are many activities that fall under the umbrella of M & E, as it is often abbreviated; my project falls into the category of “impact evaluation.” An impact evaluation asks the question: “How is the outcome of a program different from what would have happened without the program?”

Before I get into the thick of how to do an impact evaluation, let me tell you a little about the attendance program I’ve implemented.

Considering the low level of financial and human resources of the NGO with which I work, I decided on a very simple program based on psychology. The program consists of giving each teacher a hand-made megaphone and teaching her students a song to encourage them to attend school regularly. Each day, a different student is assigned to bring the megaphone home and to sing the song into it the next morning on his way to school.

While this may seem like an unconventional idea, it makes use of the psychological principles of self-signaling and social proof to create habits and social norms around going to school when none exist. Firstly, the child who uses the megaphone is making an effort to show others that she goes to school. Often, when we exert effort for some goal, we believe ourselves to value it more. Therefore, the child who uses the megaphone and sings the song may come to believe that school is an important part of his life. Secondly, we implicitly think that the actions of other people in our community are reasonable. So if children see another child going to school they may be more likely to go also.

While the megaphone program sounds like it may work on paper, I don’t whether it will work in reality. So, I decided to build “impact evaluation” into the implementation. If the impact evaluation shows that it works, I will recommend the program, or something similar, to other NGOs working in education.

The kind of impact evaluation I am doing to test the effect of the megaphones is called a “randomized controlled experiment.” Like an experiment in the physical sciences, a randomized controlled experiment used for impact evaluation measures the difference between a control and an experimental group to estimate the effect of the program.

Therefore, I randomly assigned the NGO’s 35 schools to either the experimental or the control group, and only implemented the program in the experimental schools. Before the end of the school year, I will show up unannounced to each of the schools and take attendance. I will compare these attendance figures to a baseline measurement of attendance that I took before implementing the program. Specifically, I will try to see whether there has been an improvement in the experimental schools that did not occur in the control schools.

If the megaphone program works, it will be a low-cost way for NGOs and governments to encourage more children to attend school. It will also provide support for the idea that social norms and habits around school-going are an important missing link in the education of extremely poor children.

- Diane Coffey

The Fierce Urgency of Now, by Natassia Rozario

2009-01-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

I begin writing this entry on Martin Luther King Day and on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration. I can’t help but reflect upon my service corps fellowship experiences here in India in the context of these historic events. Images of King and footage from his “I have a dream” speech appear on TV, as the sound of wedding parties and howling stray dogs from the streets filter through the windows of my flat. Crowds gather on a cold winter afternoon in Washington D.C to commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. King, as children in Ahmedabad put down their kites and shopkeepers close their doors for the night. As I get ready to tuck myself into bed, I am struck by the smallness of the world and the immense sense of attachment I feel to my home in the US and my new home in India.

At this moment, the resonance between both worlds is strong. I see parallels between King’s work and that of Saath, the NGO that I have been placed with for the fellowship. During my 10 months in India, I am working with Saath to improve access to affordable primary healthcare among the slum communities of Ahmedabad. Like King, Saath embodies perseverance and imagination in its leadership. Because of its persistence over the past 20 years, Saath has been able to elevate slum communities into “equitable and sustainable human settlements.” The NGO has been a pivotal organization to developing the infrastructure of slums in Ahmedabad, and to enhancing the lives of slum residents via its health, education, and livelihood initiatives. Because of its imagination, the organization has been able to envision a better world for the vulnerable populations of Ahmedabad, a city which has a recent history of communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims. Saath, however, has been able to see beyond the politics and prejudices that have become so deeply entrenched. In this respect, it has been visionary in working with both communities. Saath does not focus on the divisions between the groups and the politics involved, but rather places emphasis on their common humanity. They are not Hindus and Muslims in need of the services, but rather people entitled to the same basic human rights and opportunities to succeed.

Pictures from the Field: Meetings with local teachers,
health field workers, and community leaders.

King’s dream also partly takes root in Ahmedabad. It was here that Gandhi conducted many of his “experiments with truth”, which played a tremendous influence on King’s commitment to non-violence and civil disobedience. It was also here that the great Salt March began, ultimately paving way for India’s independence and also providing a model for America’s civil rights movement.

Despite these links, Ahmedabad also signals that we have a long way to go before the dreams of those like King and Gandhi are to be realized. Ahmedabad is one of the richest cities in India. Amidst the mega malls, marble mansions, and promises of a new superhighway breathe pockets of abject poverty, many of which have been carved along socioeconomic lines. I grapple with how the government and the society as a whole can have the resources and means to advance the equity and harmony of the city, but yet allow wide economic gaps and bitter intolerances to persist. This situation is not unique to Ahmedabad, but also true of many parts of the world in countries enjoying prosperity and those struggling with scarcity alike. When we have the capacity to eliminate human poverty and misery, it is morally unacceptable that certain groups continue to languish and be denied their basic rights. It is not a lack of human resources, but lack of human will and in some cases willful acts rooted in prejudice and hatred that allow such gross inequities to continue. Moreover, as our world becomes more globalized, our proximity to others only increases and makes it impossible to turn a blind eye to the injustices and suffering endured by another.

I finish writing this entry on inauguration day. At this historic moment of transition, I also turn inwards. The words of our new president have inspired me to take a longer and harder look at our world, and have challenged me to examine how I can do my part better. It will not only take the efforts of our world leaders to address the problems that confront our global community, but the collective efforts of us all. As Gandhi observed, “we must be the change we want to see in the world.” My time in India and at Saath also has provided constant reminder of the very simple but often forgotten notion that our self interest and destinies are inextricably linked to that of others.

At this moment, I also reflect on another stage of change in my life. I face a transition point in my time here in India. We are approaching the middle of our fellowship. Last week, the 22 fellows gathered for a midpoint conference at Anandwan, an ashram founded by Baba Amte, a man who championed the cause of Indian lepers and untouchables. The ashram serves as a rehabilitative home for lepers and the handicapped to live their lives with dignity. I was inspired not only by Amte’s lifetime work, but also by my fellow fellows and their commitment to service and ability to treat the challenges of their work with tenacity, curiosity, sensitivity, integrity, and humility. As I move from the first to the second half of the fellowship, I have become increasingly more reflective. I suppose such rumination is typical of midpoints and other transition periods that provide unique vantage points to view the mistakes and achievements made in our past, and the wide, open possibilities of our future. In these brief 5 months, I have come a long way and have learned a vast amount, but I find myself asking questions like: Where did the time go? What do I have to show for it? Can I do better and work harder? Have I taken full advantage of living and working in a country as rich and varied as India?

On this inauguration day, I recognize the hype. A hefty task lies ahead and the expectations are high. I, nonetheless, am taken by the moment. I understand what King meant over 45 years ago when he stood on the steps of Lincoln Memorial to share his dream with the world and described “the fierce urgency of Now.” On this day, January 20, 2009, both the past and future are marked by a man “whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant” but who “can now stand before [us] to take a most sacred oath.” Those of our past who fought for a more just, tolerant, and peaceful world are smiling down on us, and those generations of our future will be proud of what we have accomplished. From thousands of miles away, I watch the throngs of people gathered along Pennsylvania Avenue, waving not only American flags but flags from different lands and peoples. It feels as if the pulse of our planet has just skipped a beat.

Gandhi, King, Obama, and the women I met
at a microfinance meeting in Ahmedabad.

- Natassia Rozario

Midpoint at Anandwan, by Sophie Namy

2009-01-19T22:18:00.000-08:00

I feel fortunate that it falls on me to write a touchy-feely blog describing our midpoint retreat at Anandwad (Forest of Joy). While life the past few months has been marked by the expected ups and downs and inevitable frustrations, midpoint—and I think I can speak for most of the fellows here—was a time for connection, reflection and rejuvenation.

Over 50 years ago, Baba Amte founded Anandwad to create a living-working community for Indians living with leprosy and other disabilities. This beautiful, peaceful and yet vibrant ashram (over 450 acres) provided an inspiring space for AIF fellows and staff to get together and share our experiences thus far. Outside of somewhat formal presentations from every fellow, we spent our four + days exploring our placements (personally, culturally, professionally) in greater depth, questioning assumptions and/or expectations, listening to one another, offering advice, laughing at the strange predicaments in which we sometimes find ourselves, contrasting the diverse landscapes and people we interact with, and, in general, sharing insights about the realities of “Development” in our respective regions and organizations.

We were also fortunate to have two leaders in the field join us for special presentations — Dr. Ramki Ramakrishnan of SAATHII (Chennai) and Mr. Rajendra Joshi of Saath (Gujarat). And of course we devoted plenty of time to something that our group truly excels at: enjoying each others company. Over delicious, wholesome meals (made from organic ingredients carefully harvested from the grounds of the ashram itself) and while getting to know the artisanal workshops, fields and communities of Anandwad, we continued to come together as this year’s unique cohort of Service Corps fellows.

On a personal note, I spent the train ride back to Delhi reflecting on new perspectives about my work thus far, the opportunities for improvement over the next several months, and how our cumulative experiences through this fellowship relates to the larger story of the NGO sector here in India.

Residents of Anandwad, many of whom unequivocally embody Baba Amte’s message
that “confidence must rest in your wrist” as opposed to the charity of others.

In the last post, my fiancé (Matthew) shared experiences from our placement in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand. Our organization works in several aspects of rural development, including livelihoods, health, technology and education. While professionally we have faced several obstacles and have yet to make real progress implementing our individual projects, we have been exposed to many of the ground realities (often misunderstood in project planning and by larger funding organizations) that make working in this region so challenging. Outside of our work life, the culture of the mountains itself offers many interesting lessons. The following excerpt describes some of the day-to-day in Pithoragarh, the larger of our two field locations.

All Walks Lead to More Chai…
(An Excerpt from the Mountains)

Pithoragarh is certainly not the sleepy mountain town I had expected. In fact by 6AM the traffic has started and by 8 "ba ba black sheep" "three blind mice" and other American favorites are being (loudly) broadcast from an English medium school a few blocks away. This is a transient place, with many laborers commuting daily from Nepal—creating a somewhat tense atmosphere not unlike that of other border towns I have visited. The place embodies an interesting mix of a “big city” (though the population of approximately 100,000 is still relatively small by Indian standards) with a conservative social ethos reminiscent of much smaller towns in rural India: people in the streets frequently stop to touch elders' feet; women do not venture out alone after dark; dalits must worship outside of temples; hierarchical relationships permeate family, social and work relations; festivals provide the majority of community entertainment; and women are constantly fasting for their husbands, children, gods, etc. There is a lot to learn, and people are eager to explain all the idiosyncrasies of their pahari (of the mountains) existence, which is physically isolated from the rest of the country. And although Matt and I no longer inspire the curiosity-bordering-bewilderment that we did upon arriving… all walks still lead to chai. Occasionally we make a conscious effort to set off exploring without entering into anyone's home — and yet a few steps out of town, someone will inevitably call us over, grab us by the hand, and (with surprising strength and purpose) ensure that we sit and join them for tea. This is part of the rhythm of life here, and provides a commonality despite differences in gender, age, nationality, class, religion, etc. And on a cold day in the mountains, what could taste better than a strong cup of milky, spicy chai?

- Sophie Namy

Sadhus we met at two nearby mountain temples,
and me and a local SHG leader after an interview.