Recently, when I was getting back to work from Harvard Square, I ran into a person representing a charity organization called Children International (link). The organization asks for a fixed amount of around 30$ a month to help support the education and other needs of poor kids around the world. I listened to this person intently because this is something I had been considering for some time before as well, but then I realized that his intention was more than just informing me of the possibilities of helping through their organization---he wanted me to make a commitment right there and then and this was something I wasn't prepared to do, not without fully ascertaining for myself the authenticity of this charity and not without asking Saloni of what her thoughts on this were.
Nevertheless, it was a good thing that I ran into this chap because it set into motion something that had lay dormant in my mind for a while now. I've always felt a giant void in the things that I believe in, and the things that I end up acting upon. Some of it is down to time, some of it is down to not knowing how best to help, and some of it is down to simply the fact that I'm lazy. There are innumerable ways to make a difference in the lives of people, some big and some small, but not all of them can be reconciled with the fact that you have your own ambitions in life related to your own career.
The idea of helping some child's education through a monthly donation, however, stuck. Saloni is far more charitable than me anyway and so it wasn't hard to convince her. I think this is a very minimal contribution, but at least, it is something. And it is quite incredible that 30$ a month can help; I was wasting a lot more on 85mms before anyway. Just imagining that waste of health and money compared to how this can help reminds me of where I come from and it is humbling. After looking through the pages of a bunch of charities, we finally settled on SOS Children's Villages (link). The charity works by setting up small mini-villages where children who are abandoned by their parents, who cannot afford to take care of them, or for whatever other myriad reason it may be, can be taken care of, educated, and made contributing citizens in the future. The children get a nice home, friends, an education and I know that when you're young this is all one wants.
We requested for a young girl in Bawana, which is a village near Delhi. It was again a tough decision---why not help a boy, and/or why not help a kid from any other place, even America. I still felt that, since I'll get to visit Delhi more often, it would be easier to help more than just through money; a girl because, as Nehru always said, when you educate a girl, you end up educating a family in the future. I do not want to lay any claim to such possibilities, but the best you can do is to try to help in some way.
In about 3 weeks of requesting to help, we received a picture of the young girl we will be supporting and also some small information about her. Now I'm nervous. I'm going to be in Delhi in 2 weeks and I need to figure out what I'm going to say to her when I meet her. I have so many useless theories about how society should be and I know that none of those are going to help this kid who's just 7 right now! She probably just wants to draw and be happy! :)
UPDATE:
I wasn't sure if I could handle the situation on my own (plus, I don't think anyone would trust a guy to come and talk to a young girl) so I insisted my mom and cousin-didi come along. They were more than up for it :). The drive to Bawana was pretty smooth; it's like 15 kilometers from Rohini. The SOS village itself is a walled compound about the size of my school in Delhi. The architectural style is similar to most of Rohini, and Delhi otherwise---red sand/sandstone for foot-paths, buildings etc. surrounded by a bunch of shrubs and grass. When we entered the compound, we went straight to the central office which is like a small room with a desk and computer and a few seats for visitors. We met two people there who looked like typical Babus but they had a pleasant demeanor and seemed knowledgeable and committed to working for the charity and the village. My mom did nearly all the asking/talking and she was extremely thorough in finding out about the charity's structure, their methods of enrolling new children, and the education and support they provide to them. I'm always impressed by how she manages to ask all the important questions; there's a reason why my dad maintains that she's the smart one in the family.
We had a long conversation, and, I was getting both a bit impatient and also a bit worried whether this was giving them time enough to possibly clean/clear up stuff before we went to visit the girl. It seems unlikely, in hindsight. The structure of the `village' is such that there's a central area for children to come out and play. From there, you can navigate to any one family's home which has a living room and a few tiny rooms with a bed each for the kids to sleep in. We were taken straight to the living room of the family of the girl we are supporting. There we saw 5 of the family's kids. 2 boys and 3 girls. The girl we support is the youngest of the children in her family. There was a fridge, a tv, a computer, and a water cooler in the room. The `mother' straightaway brought us some cool lemon juice which we refused so the kids happily drank them instead. The lady had been working there as a `mother' for the past 20 years now and my mom was unrelenting in praising her for her effort and commitment to this cause.
The little girl was very shy. She was asked to come to us by the mother, so she timidly left her siblings to come meet us. I asked her her name, and she replied `Achita' instead of `Akshita'. :P I asked her which class she was in, which school she went to, and what her favorite subjects were. She said, "doosri [second grade], ..., Draw aur [and] color". This was good, because I spent a lot of time finding a gift for her and eventually settled on a drawing set. I had mixed feelings about the gift. I wanted to give her a Lego set and I was all set to buy one, but when I contacted my mom to confirm whether it was a good choice, she advised me against it. She said girls in India are not interested in these things and that she wouldn't enjoy the gift. I told her that I'd like my girl to play with Legos too so why should I treat this girl differently? It's like one of those problems---you believe that things should be a certain way, but are not sure whether you should force your opinion on others---so I decided to get a nice coloring set instead.
We also got to meet the other kids. One girl was much older; she had come to the village as a 5 year old and was now 23, about to go off on an internship in a hotel. It seems many of the girls ended up as nurses or hotel staff. There were more successes too. One girl recently landed a job in Singapore after doing MBA, and the mother told us how proud she was. Another girl, not from her family had recently gotten into a top law school. This was very heartening to hear. The education system in India is totally messed up. Either you're a top student (top 0.001%) and the government takes care of you (you go to IIT or AIIMS or some such top place) or you must wheedle your way using money through the underbelly of corrupt and subpar private colleges. These kids do not have the privilege of affluent parents to get them better degrees, so when they succeed, it is because they are genuinely good. It makes their successes even more admirable than those like us who've had, by comparison, a much easier life. The fact that most of these kids were finding something useful to do reflected well on the charity and I felt really happy about this.
We also met a younger girl who wanted to join the police. It seemed like a good place for her. From her accent, I could tell she was a typical Haranyvi Jaat girl who you wouldn't be surprised to find with a hockey stick beating some people up---if Haryanvi men are screwed up, so are the (our) women; let us remember that nearly all of India's sporting success stories, which are success stories in shooting, wrestling, boxing..., male or female, are from Haryana. (Go Haryana!) Our little girl didn't speak much and instead went back to playing with her siblings, although she did say `thank you' to me once. :) In return, I got to squeeze her cheeks :D.
Overall, I felt really satisfied and happy with the charity. Hopefully I can go meet Akshita again soon.
Nevertheless, it was a good thing that I ran into this chap because it set into motion something that had lay dormant in my mind for a while now. I've always felt a giant void in the things that I believe in, and the things that I end up acting upon. Some of it is down to time, some of it is down to not knowing how best to help, and some of it is down to simply the fact that I'm lazy. There are innumerable ways to make a difference in the lives of people, some big and some small, but not all of them can be reconciled with the fact that you have your own ambitions in life related to your own career.
The idea of helping some child's education through a monthly donation, however, stuck. Saloni is far more charitable than me anyway and so it wasn't hard to convince her. I think this is a very minimal contribution, but at least, it is something. And it is quite incredible that 30$ a month can help; I was wasting a lot more on 85mms before anyway. Just imagining that waste of health and money compared to how this can help reminds me of where I come from and it is humbling. After looking through the pages of a bunch of charities, we finally settled on SOS Children's Villages (link). The charity works by setting up small mini-villages where children who are abandoned by their parents, who cannot afford to take care of them, or for whatever other myriad reason it may be, can be taken care of, educated, and made contributing citizens in the future. The children get a nice home, friends, an education and I know that when you're young this is all one wants.
We requested for a young girl in Bawana, which is a village near Delhi. It was again a tough decision---why not help a boy, and/or why not help a kid from any other place, even America. I still felt that, since I'll get to visit Delhi more often, it would be easier to help more than just through money; a girl because, as Nehru always said, when you educate a girl, you end up educating a family in the future. I do not want to lay any claim to such possibilities, but the best you can do is to try to help in some way.
In about 3 weeks of requesting to help, we received a picture of the young girl we will be supporting and also some small information about her. Now I'm nervous. I'm going to be in Delhi in 2 weeks and I need to figure out what I'm going to say to her when I meet her. I have so many useless theories about how society should be and I know that none of those are going to help this kid who's just 7 right now! She probably just wants to draw and be happy! :)
UPDATE:
I wasn't sure if I could handle the situation on my own (plus, I don't think anyone would trust a guy to come and talk to a young girl) so I insisted my mom and cousin-didi come along. They were more than up for it :). The drive to Bawana was pretty smooth; it's like 15 kilometers from Rohini. The SOS village itself is a walled compound about the size of my school in Delhi. The architectural style is similar to most of Rohini, and Delhi otherwise---red sand/sandstone for foot-paths, buildings etc. surrounded by a bunch of shrubs and grass. When we entered the compound, we went straight to the central office which is like a small room with a desk and computer and a few seats for visitors. We met two people there who looked like typical Babus but they had a pleasant demeanor and seemed knowledgeable and committed to working for the charity and the village. My mom did nearly all the asking/talking and she was extremely thorough in finding out about the charity's structure, their methods of enrolling new children, and the education and support they provide to them. I'm always impressed by how she manages to ask all the important questions; there's a reason why my dad maintains that she's the smart one in the family.
We had a long conversation, and, I was getting both a bit impatient and also a bit worried whether this was giving them time enough to possibly clean/clear up stuff before we went to visit the girl. It seems unlikely, in hindsight. The structure of the `village' is such that there's a central area for children to come out and play. From there, you can navigate to any one family's home which has a living room and a few tiny rooms with a bed each for the kids to sleep in. We were taken straight to the living room of the family of the girl we are supporting. There we saw 5 of the family's kids. 2 boys and 3 girls. The girl we support is the youngest of the children in her family. There was a fridge, a tv, a computer, and a water cooler in the room. The `mother' straightaway brought us some cool lemon juice which we refused so the kids happily drank them instead. The lady had been working there as a `mother' for the past 20 years now and my mom was unrelenting in praising her for her effort and commitment to this cause.
The little girl was very shy. She was asked to come to us by the mother, so she timidly left her siblings to come meet us. I asked her her name, and she replied `Achita' instead of `Akshita'. :P I asked her which class she was in, which school she went to, and what her favorite subjects were. She said, "doosri [second grade], ..., Draw aur [and] color". This was good, because I spent a lot of time finding a gift for her and eventually settled on a drawing set. I had mixed feelings about the gift. I wanted to give her a Lego set and I was all set to buy one, but when I contacted my mom to confirm whether it was a good choice, she advised me against it. She said girls in India are not interested in these things and that she wouldn't enjoy the gift. I told her that I'd like my girl to play with Legos too so why should I treat this girl differently? It's like one of those problems---you believe that things should be a certain way, but are not sure whether you should force your opinion on others---so I decided to get a nice coloring set instead.
We also got to meet the other kids. One girl was much older; she had come to the village as a 5 year old and was now 23, about to go off on an internship in a hotel. It seems many of the girls ended up as nurses or hotel staff. There were more successes too. One girl recently landed a job in Singapore after doing MBA, and the mother told us how proud she was. Another girl, not from her family had recently gotten into a top law school. This was very heartening to hear. The education system in India is totally messed up. Either you're a top student (top 0.001%) and the government takes care of you (you go to IIT or AIIMS or some such top place) or you must wheedle your way using money through the underbelly of corrupt and subpar private colleges. These kids do not have the privilege of affluent parents to get them better degrees, so when they succeed, it is because they are genuinely good. It makes their successes even more admirable than those like us who've had, by comparison, a much easier life. The fact that most of these kids were finding something useful to do reflected well on the charity and I felt really happy about this.
We also met a younger girl who wanted to join the police. It seemed like a good place for her. From her accent, I could tell she was a typical Haranyvi Jaat girl who you wouldn't be surprised to find with a hockey stick beating some people up---if Haryanvi men are screwed up, so are the (our) women; let us remember that nearly all of India's sporting success stories, which are success stories in shooting, wrestling, boxing..., male or female, are from Haryana. (Go Haryana!) Our little girl didn't speak much and instead went back to playing with her siblings, although she did say `thank you' to me once. :) In return, I got to squeeze her cheeks :D.
Overall, I felt really satisfied and happy with the charity. Hopefully I can go meet Akshita again soon.
