*Note: this blog was written by me on February 1st, 2014. I ended up writing way more about each of these organizations that I had intended, and then I got hung up on writing more about each one and basically put my blog on hold. I started many more blog entries as the months passed, so my hope is to complete the blog entries post-trip and to put them here belatedly. I love sharing my story, and I apologize for the delay. I hope you still enjoy, and please feel free to ask me any questions or share your thoughts!
Goutamji told me
a story about the Hindu god Vishnu, who volunteered to swallow an
entire sea of poison in order to save a group of gods, leaving his
throat bright blue. The way Goutamji interpreted it is that there is poison
in the world, along with all of the good things. You should not
swallow the poison, but you should hold it in your throat and learn
from it. I think that's what I'm doing here in India—taking my
observations and merely holding them and studying them to find out
more about development, about life in India, about myself.
I could write for
days on each organization we met, but I'll briefly describe each one
instead so you're not completely sacked with information (I took
pages of notes, if anyone's interested, or go check out the
organizations' websites!). Some organizations left larger impressions
on me than others, as you'll soon see.
It all started on January 13th We met first with
Merry Barua, the founder of Action For Autism (AFA). Her son, now 30,
is autistic. When his symptoms were showing themselves, though,
“autism” was not even a concept in India. Imagine not even having
the words to describe your child's condition! (Plus, many people in
India look at a disability as a result of bad karma by the person who
is disabled or even a family member, so people with disabilities and
their families are very often shunned). He was misdiagnosed with
behavioral issues and thus his symptoms went untreated, becoming
worse. She took it upon herself to start a school specifically for
people with autism. This led to a massive campaign to raise awareness
about autism in India, and the establishment of partnerships with top
researchers as far as Chicago and Denmark to train doctors, educators
and parents on what autism is and how to support a person with
autism. AFA is now heavily involved with drafting and passing
legislation regarding people with disabilities. They are truly doing
some amazing things regarding social innovation and human rights.
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| The activities of Action for Autism |
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| Activities designed specifically for adults with autism. |
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| Emilyji trying out the handloom that adults with autism use to produce sellable crafts. |
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| Supplies for adults with autism to make sellable handcrafts |
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| Seems rudimentary, but this classroom setup is based on research and is extremely advanced for developing countries in that in recognizes the need for organization and individualized education for students with autism. |
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| This kind of thing reminded me of my classroom in a way! |
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| Textured mats for kinesthetic learning at Action for Autism |
Monday afternoon
we met with Vimlendu Jha, the young founder of Swechha, which means
“We For Change.” He originally started “We For Yamuna” to get
the youth of Delhi to rally together to raise awareness and bring
about government action regarding the ridiculously polluted Yamuna
River. Delhi's primary drinking water source is clean until it
reaches the capital, whose well-educated governing and scholarly
classes leave it in an absolutely wretched state. We For Yamuna
transformed, over time, into Swechha, due to the realization that
government apathy and inaction were such huge issues (it's
interesting to note that the Indian government can get an incredibly
sophisticated metro system built in just a few years, but it won't
put in the effort to get a major water source cleaned up). Today,
Swechha continues its environmental advocacy work, but it also works
to empower the Indian youth to become change-makers. Vimlendu talked
to us about social entrepreneurship, and how it finds itself as an
balanced alternative between the two extremes of profit-driven
business and donation/grant-dependent NGOs. I was glad we were able
to get such a firm foundation in social entrepreneurship so early.
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| Vimlendu Jha gave us an awesome lecture about social entrepreneurship from his vantage point as a social entrepreneur in India |
Our third speaker
that day was Noor Parvin Aboobacker from BBC Media, who spoke to us
about monitoring and evaluation in the context of social
entrepreneurship and social innovation. In order for growth to be
evident, there has to be evidence! Baseline surveys, midway surveys,
and end surveys must be administered to understand the situation
before, during and after services are rendered. This should be used
for obtaining funding, but more importantly it should be used to
drive strategy. It's crazy how much teaching has already taught me
about the world, because this is the same kind of thing we had to do
with our students to ensure that they were actually making progress
in the areas they needed the most. Unfortunately Noor's presentation
did not impress me too much, but the topic of Measuring and
Evaluation has reoccurred to me several times, and it is not one to be
ignored as I continue my plunge into the world of development.
Alright,
so that about wraps up my FIRST day of classes haha! I'll write
another one to cover some more organizations—we really met some
amazing people in India, and I would love for my friends and family
and others to be in the know about efforts to improve lives in India.
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