Learning to Write Again

It's been nearly a decade since I've been an active blogger. I "re-discovered" my online trove of writings yesterday, and was amazed at the openness with which I approached the world in my early 20s. Now, in my early 30s, I look back at that young woman blogger with envy. I am amazed that I was able to find so many things that fascinated me, that kept me up at night, writing fervently to capture emotions, characters, situations. Now, I'm not sure what to write about anymore.


Around the time of my last blog post, I headed to grad school to study international affairs and business. I hopped around cities in the US, gained 1.5 degrees and a mountain-load of debt. After graduating in 2010, I spent the next five years working in finance in NYC. I met my husband, we had a fairy-tale wedding in India, and now we have a 1 year old baby and call the Upper West Side home.

So there it is...the next chapter of my life, encapsulated in 4 lines. A world of stability and comfort, very different from my itinerant days. So ordinary, that I'm not sure I'm worthy of a voice anymore. Just so ordinary.

Or is it?

3 sisters, 6 Penn Degrees

This article was originally published in Penn's Red and Blue magazine, and was the winning entry for the 2012 "You are Penn" story contest.


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3 sisters, 6 Penn Degrees
- by Smita Jain

Brunches at White Dog.  Saturday morning runs along the Schuylkill.  First Fridays in Old City.  Pub.

There are so many memories that my sisters and I share of Penn. It was the place where we forged our deepest friendships, expanded our sense of self, and learned new ways of being and thinking. Among all the experiences we’ve shared together so far, our collective Penn experiences -- spanning 15 years, 6 degrees and 3 schools – have perhaps left the deepest imprint on us.

Penn has had an invisible pull on my family since my older sister Sarika (Eng’02, WG’08) first stepped onto campus as a bright-eyed Engineering student in 1998. I couldn’t believe her stories when she came back home to India for vacations: she had friends from all around the world, participated in marathon computer programming sessions with brilliant minds, and had taken her love for salsa to new levels.

When it came my turn to pick colleges, it wasn’t hard for her to convince me that Penn was the place to be. Having attended high school in urban India, I dreamed of a liberal arts education in a beautiful American college campus that had a small town-meets-big city feel. With its unique blend of West Philly character, hip downtown scene and verdant parks, she was sure that I would love Philadelphia.

Looking back, I can’t imagine having had such an amazing college experience anywhere else. I kicked off my Penn experience with PennQuest, hiking through the beautiful Appalachian mountains with a handful of my new classmates, some of whom would remain my closest friends years later. PennQuest almost seems a metaphor for my Penn experience: a shared journey with an unknown destination, with rich learnings, challenges, laughter, and close friendships along the way.

My younger sister, Monica (C’07, WG‘13), needed a little more convincing. She started her undergraduate career at a liberal arts college in the South, but the lack of diversity proved difficult to adapt to. During her first year, when she reported her concern to her sisters that her fellow classmates always confused “India” with “Indiana”, Sarika and I knew that the Penn pull was needed. Not surprisingly, she started up at Penn the following year! She immediately found a comfortable home at Penn, sharing a particularly close bond with fellow transfer students from around the world.

We had each cherished our Penn undergraduate experiences. So when the time came for us to pick our graduate schools, after several years in the professional world, we each independently decided that MBAs were right for us. And what better school than our beloved alma mater, with the number one business school program in the world!

So soon enough, Penn had wielded its inexorable pull on us again. Sarika went to Wharton to study strategy, while Monica (who is currently in her second year at Wharton) and I went to study finance. Our Wharton experiences have been completely different from our undergraduate experiences, in new and exciting ways. With its emphasis on global learning and professional development, Wharton taught us lessons in leadership and management that went far beyond the classroom, indeed even to the far corners of the world. With the support of an 800-strong class of tremendously talented classmates, we learned how to design strategies, build financial models and lead campus organizations to address complex global problems. My sisters and I have each had our unique experiences at Penn, but the synergies that have emanated from our shared network of friends, professors and classmates have been unparalleled.

My parents, who are all too familiar with Philly by now, are scheduled to attend Monica’s graduation in 2013.

As much as they love Penn, they are wondering if we’ve had enough Penn degrees for a while…at least until the next generation of the Jain family!

We are a Proud Penn family!

 

Women's History Month at Span

Celebrating Women's History Month this March, I have profiled Mallika Dutt, the charismatic visionary behind Breakthrough. You can read the article on Span's website here.

I had written about Breakthrough earlier, way back in November 2005. I had just seen 'Maati', the beautiful video about an upper-class woman infected with HIV by her husband, and was totally blown away by the video's electric combination of stunning visuals, evocative lyrics and hard-hitting message. Can't find that video online, but another one worth watching is Mann Ke Manjeere (title song of the album and nominated for MTVs Best Indipop Music Video), and is here.

I remember getting some interesting comments from readers on the article, mostly from men. Probably not coincidental, since the article talked about getting men to well, be more sensitive to women by using condoms when requested to do so (and when not requested), and by being open about their previous sexual partners. Have posted some comments below:

From I. Ghosh, Chandigarh
It is true the men should keep there male chauvinisim at bay and realise there reponssibilites towards his life partner , his family and above all the society in which he lives.Like food ,shelter and education, after a certain age sex too plays an important part in a man's life.And I belive that it is the right of every human being to get the best knowledge about safe sex. At school children are taught about various deseases that spread through contaminated water and the precaution they should take. In the same way deseases relating to sex for example STD and AIDS must be a part of school syllaby after a certatin class, maybe in 11th and 12th grade.It should not be a taboo issue any more as AIDS is labelled as an epidemic with no cure yet. All we can do is act reponssibly and prevent it from spreading by first ,taking proper precaution on personal front and secondly by spreading the awareness.Since charity begins at home parents should feel free to take up the issue with their wards.Even elder siblings with proper knowledge can be a big help.Family physcian to can do his part....All we need now is to act ..

From Sanjay:
I have noticed a conspicuous evolution of themes especially related to advertisements, rather social messages built around curbing the spread of AIDS. If I recall correctly, the earlier campaigns were talking about the importance of having only one sexual partner. However now, we seemed to have accepted the reality that our initial plank was not strong and hence the promotion of condoms as a means to prevent the spread of virus.

I have also seen the commercial, if I can call it that way, asking the men to be more sensitive. But, from a target audience point of view, I wonder whether it will strike the right tone with the 'insensitive' men. I would say that it would have been better if they promoted something like with that advertisement. Also, I really doubt that if a condom can prevent the virus being spread – 100%. But of course it might be near 100%.

As your article suggests, the bigger challenge for India is to spread the awareness. I have read some years ago (should be at least 4 years) about prostitutes insisting their clients to wear condoms, and it was even reported that one prostitute even asked her clients to wear 2 condoms preferably. If awareness can reach groups like prostitutes who are considered inaccessible then why not the masses? Speaking about sex openly has been very un-Indian. However, if I have to go by the surveys done, at least in cities, doing sex is not. So in-addition to spreading the awareness among the people, one has to simultaneously concentrate on the younger generation – especially teenagers.

Sculpting in Sugar and Stone

On a recent trip through Punjab, I had the opportunity to witness the production of gur (unprocessed sugar), which I found to be fascinating. Here's how the process goes: a crusher presses raw sugar cane to squeeze out its juice. The yellowish juice is then 'piped' into a huge vat, where it is boiled until it thickens. The thickened, coagulated juice floating on top is then scooped into a boiling vat next door, where it is further thickened. By this time, the juice is a dark green and is thick and syrupy. The process is again repeated in a final vat, where the coagulated syrup turns brown and thick. The thick, caramel-like paste is then scooped onto a gigantic flat-pan, where it is cooled, and beaten with a shovel-like instrument. The cooled mass of gur is then packed like blocks of stones into squares of cloth.

It was almost like being in an Indian-village version of Willy Wonka's chocoloate factory. The gooey mess looked so good I felt like jumping into it. Seriously.



Also en route was a Jain mandir in the making. Interestingly, alot of modern-day religious sculptors - like the ones in these pictures - are hired laborers from poor states like Orissa, where the backbreaking job of stone-cutting is the only kind of work they can get. Well, on the brighter side, they are probably raking in good karma.

Saksham

Close encounters

SMITA JAIN

Thanks to awareness created by Saksham, some children in Nithari were able to escape the clutches of the Noida killers.

KNOWLEDGE TO THE RESCUE: The children with the teachers in a Saksham classroom.

NOIDA'S serial killers have exposed the extreme inequity — and lawlessness — that exists in one of the most prosperous suburbs in India. The media has covered, in minute detail, the lives of the killers and other sensationalist aspects of the gruesome murders. However, little attention has been paid to the perspectives of children who inhabit the slum, many of whom escaped, just barely, from the unyielding hands of the killers. Children who didn't directly encounter the duo had nonetheless been affected by the happenings in D-5, due to their close proximity.

Saksham, an NGO located in the slum of Nithari, has been conducting free educational classes for children of Nithari since 2002. Currently, the school caters to around 350 children in the 4-15 age group, and operates from a small premises located just a few hundred meters from D-5. Around 13 children from Saksham fortuitously escaped the clutches of the murderers, and their stories reveal an extraordinary presence of mind and courage.

Resisting strangers

Rashmi, 15, was returning to her home in Nithari with her younger brother and an older male neighbour one evening. She was holding her brother's hand as they walked, and she recalls a white car driving up beside them as they proceeded on the road. The man in the car — now identified as Satish — asked her if she wanted to come to his house, where he promised her some enticing sweets. She refused, and they continued walking. Satish then picked up speed, caught her unawares from behind, opened the passenger door, and tried to pull her in. As Rashmi tried to wriggle free from his grasp, the older boy accompanying her ran away, fearful for his life. In those moments, as she struggled for her life, she quickly let go of her brother's hand. "I knew my life was at stake. However, I thought that I should at least save my brother, because his life — as the only son in our family — is more valuable than mine," she recalls. As she let go of her brother, she bit Satish's hand as hard as she could and managed to wrest free. She then ran as fast as she could to the nearest adult, a paanwaala, and alerted him to the man in the car. Satish had, meanwhile, driven away.

Rashmi has been attending classes at Saksham for the last year, and strongly believes that what she has learned at Saksham contributed greatly to her presence of mind during those crucial moments. "The teachers at Saksham have always impressed upon us the importance of saying no to strangers, no matter what they offer," she says. "Through Saksham, I have gained a lot of confidence and am more aware of how to handle myself."

Personal safety

Priya, an eight-year old child who studies at a local school in Nithari and also attends evening classes at Saksham, was startled during class one morning when the school Principal called her to his room one day to inform her that her uncle was there to pick her up. She went to the Principal's room, only to discover that she had never seen this "uncle" before. "He said that my mother was ill, and that he had come to take me home to see her. He even knew my mother's name and my brother's name," she remembers. The Principal urged her to go, but she refused on the grounds that she didn't know who the man was. The man — now identified as Satish — urged her to come, and grabbed her hand. The Principal exhorted her to go too, but she broke free from Satish's grasp, and bolted from the room. Still shaken by the incident, Priya says that the lessons in personal safety that teachers at Saksham have constantly emphasised were with her on that fateful morning.

Vital skills

"At Saksham, above all, we try to instil confidence in the children and impart life-skills, two things which are never taught in their homes or schools. From the beginning, we have constantly impressed upon the children the danger of roaming around unattended," says Nadira Razak, the founder of Saksham. "We also discuss sensitive issues such as molestation, particularly among the girls. We discuss with them openly how they can protect themselves in the face of abnormal behaviour from men, whether the men are acquaintances or strangers." Razak, a former Railways Officer, founded Saksham with the intention of providing the children of Nithari's slums with an education that was well-grounded, compassionate and sensitive to their needs. The battle to encourage families to send their children — especially their daughters — was an uphill one at the beginning, and she recalls making daily trips from jhuggi to jhuggi urging parents to send their children to the classes. "Parents often argued that children would be better off earning money for the family or taking care of their siblings at home," she recalls. Within a short while, however, the roles were reversed as the positive change within the children became noticeable: parents were lining up in front of the school in the hopes of getting their child admitted into the school. Even today, there is a long "waiting list" for admission into the school, as the school is unable to expand to accommodate all children who would like to attend.

Passing the knowledge

Within the school and outside, the torch of knowledge continues to be passed on. Some of Razak's older students now teach the younger ones, in addition to furthering their own education. These student-teachers have decided to go to a nearby village, Morna, to teach children there. "We would like to help children gain access to education, the way Saksham has given us education," says Soni, a senior student at Saksham.

However, Saksham isn't a large, institutionally-funded institution; it is a small community effort begun by concerned citizens. Its expenses are thrown together on an ad hoc basis from month to month, and its budget is being met by donations from individuals. The school runs on a small, rented ground strewn with pencil shavings and bits of paper, and a perpetual layer of grime remains complacently stuck to its floors. Teachers of the school, though competent, hail from the area.

Enormous impact

Despite its unassuming modus operandi, Saksham has undoubtedly had an enormous impact on the community around it. "I don't think many girls would have been able to escape from the duo had it not been for what they learned at Saksham," says Pinky, a 15-year-old girl who has been attending classes at Saksham for the last five years and now teaches younger children. "I have self-confidence now, and feel that I can protect myself in the face of any danger, even though I am a girl," she adds. With lawlessness proving to be the rule rather than the exception, community efforts like Saksham are more in need today than ever before.

Email Saksham at: nadirarazak@rediffmail.com

Going to School

Span Magazine, January/February 2007

Lisa Heydlauff’s office is no ordinary workplace: an endearing pug pup bounds over to greet me as I step inside; its colorfully-painted walls are festooned with artwork. Hundreds of storybooks from around the world, as diverse in language as in design, line the bookshelves. Creatively designed posters, T-shirts and calendars can be spotted in different parts of the room.

Creativity and color are, in fact, catchwords for the ‘business’ that Heydlauff is engaged in: that of encouraging underprivileged Indian children to go to school through her New Delhi-based not-for-profit organization, ‘Going to School’ (GTS). 31-year old Lisa - whose parents live in Scottsdale, Arizona - moved to India in 1998 with a little money, a few contacts, and the dream to do something for the welfare of women and children. After a brief stint with a bridal magazine in New Delhi, Lisa was hired by UNICEF as a Communications Consultant to document success stories of UNICEF projects in government schools in states across India, including Orissa, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Haryana.

These travels were to change the direction of Lisa’s life. It was during these travels, meeting children who traveled through diverse geographical and cultural terrain to attend school, that Lisa conceptualized GTS, a multimedia campaign that, she says, “celebrates every child's right to go to school and participate in an inspiring education that is relevant to their lives.” Her idea was to create imaginative and inspiring media that captured the real-life stories of everyday children going to school across India. Though she admits that it was initially difficult to find seed funding for GTS, she found generous support from the Bharti Foundation (the charitable arm of Indian conglomerate Bharti Group) in 2001 for the creation of ‘Going to School in India’, a children’s book featuring 25 ways of going to school. For GTS, there has been no looking back since.

Today, ‘Going to School in India’ has found widespread success among children and education practitioners alike: 10 mini-books have been translated into Telegu, Tamil, Oriya, Kannada and Hindi, to be given to children free of cost in Government schools; 500,000 mini-books will be distributed to 45,000 primary schools in Orissa, reaching over 5 million children. In addition to the books are 9 mini-films - each of which recounts a day in the life of a child going to school somewhere in India - that are aired twice a day by the popular children’s channels POGO, Cartoon Network and National Geographic. Since its founding, Going to School has received support from a number of US-based funding agencies, including the Global Fund for Children in Washington, D.C, Global Giving, and Ashoka Innovators for the Public who have nominated her as an Ashoka Fellow.

Lisa firmly believes that inspiration is a key element in a child’s life, and GTS’ programs – which focus on telling positive stories of children who succeed in going to school despite geographical, physical or social challenges - reflect this. “I realized there was lots of media coverage about what did not work. But what about that which did work? I believe inspiration can change the world. And, as I traveled more, I felt positive stories about education could be told in a celebratory, transcendent way that showed schools could be fun, relevant to children’s lives. And that communities, organizations, and individuals could change the way children go to school, if they believe in possibilities – if they try,” she says.

GTS is currently in its second phase with ‘Girl Stars’, a project that creates icons of everyday women and girls who have, by going to school, changed their lives and the lives of people in their communities. For the project, Lisa and 6 of her Delhi-based colleagues traveled thousands of kilometers through the Hindi-speaking belt of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, interacting with people in cities, towns and villages, to find 15 women icons who could be icons for other girls, encouraging them to stay in school.

A few Girl Stars include Madhuri Kumari, a woman who defied social convention to become the leader of her village in Uttar Pradesh; and Anita Khushwaha, a 17 year old woman who became the first woman-beekeeper in Bihar. Each woman succeeded in completing her schooling despite challenging circumstances, and their stories advocate education as a platform to achieving life and career aspirations. “Girl Stars are extraordinary tales of ordinary girls,” explains Lisa. “It’s about what one million girls do, not one in a million. A Girl Star is a young girl or woman who able to do what she does because she is a part of a larger community where everyone has to work together to help things change; she had the courage to begin it, and the strength to take everyone with her.” ‘Girl Stars’ will be rolled out on TV channels and radio stations by UNICEF in 2007.

Next, Lisa and her Delhi-based team of 6 are looking forward to GTS’ latest and perhaps most ambitious project, ‘Be an Entrepreneur’ (BE!). This 50-book, 13-part movie, and 30-part radio series will tell 50 entrepreneurial stories to underprivileged children in India, to enable them to change their lives, their communities’ lives and participate in change in India as a whole. In particular, BE! aims to empower children from underprivileged backgrounds with skills that they can use to generate income and participate in positive community change -- once they have finished their education.

Indeed, although GTS communicates in colour and fun, it is being seen as a powerful force for positive change in children’s lives. And GTS only looks set to accomplish more in the years to come: Lisa hopes that BE! will potentially be a model that can be taken to scale across India, and around the world. Going global, perhaps, may be next on the cards for Lisa and Going to School. Except that Lisa, for now, has no plans of “going home”.

“Everyday I wake up feeling that what we have to do today is important. It may not be changing the way children see their lives everyday, but on a broader scale, for a moment, it is,” she says about GTS. “Inspiration comes in a second and changes the direction of your life. That is what we do, we inspire children and inspire change, as many days out of the week that we possibly can.”

Check out Going To School at www.goingtoschool.com

Asha for Education

Published in Span Magazine, November-December 2006

Every Wednesday, Monica Jain and a few of her friends gather for a discussion session. For a few minutes, their talk revolves around social and family events, their 50-hour workweeks, their career plans. Then they move to the subject of their meeting: what they can do to improve educational access for India’s underprivileged children. “I think we should organize a community cultural festival as a fundraiser,” one says. Another brings up an education project in Bihar that needs aid. They discuss project proposals they have received from Indian NGOs, and create a plan of action.

While the conversation is commendable in itself, what makes it remarkable is the fact that that Monica and her fellow Philadelphians do not live anywhere near India, many are not Indian and most have rarely, if ever, visited India. Most are neither well-settled professionals nor employees of an NGO. They are primarily university students attending academically rigorous American universities.

Yet despite their demanding schedules, what brings them together is the desire to make a difference in the lives of underprivileged children through Asha for Education, an international collective of individual chapters dedicated to “catalyzing socio-economic change in India through education of underprivileged children” as its Web site states (www.ashanet.org). With 74 chapters spread across the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, India and Singapore, and disbursement of more than $ 6 million from 1995 to 2004, Asha’s global army of more than 1000 active volunteers is crossing geographical and socio-cultural barriers to make a significant difference in the lives of millions of Indian children.

The success of this non-hierarchical, decentralized, volunteer-run and zero-overhead charity has not gone unnoticed. In 2004, Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator with a database of more than 3,000 organizations, ranked Asha for Education as the top charity operating on less than $2 million a year in the field of international relief and development.

For volunteers like Ravi Kandikonda, a memory chip designer in Allen, Texas, stumbling across Asha for the first time was almost like a dream come true. “A few months into my masters (degree program) at Louisiana State University, I realized a great difference between India and the U.S. in terms of having an opportunity to have basic education. I felt like doing something about it and when I saw the Asha Web site, I realized that this organization is exactly what I was looking for to act on my ideas.” Kandikonda is now the Asha Dallas chapter coordinator, spending more than 12 hours a week on Asha-related volunteer activities. Last year, the chapter raised more than $3000 through a concert featuring the Indian contemporary fusion music band Indian Ocean. “It gives me immense satisfaction, that through the organization, I am able to make a difference in the life of at least one child who otherwise would not have been able to go to school,” he says.

Like Kandikonda, many volunteers of Asha’s American chapters get involved while in university. In fact, more than half of the chapters are student-run. Jain, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and the awareness coordinator for Asha Philadelphia, says, “Being on a college campus where people spend a lot of money on parties and alcohol, I think initiatives like Asha are a good way to channel some of this money for good use. Also, because of the non-hierarchical nature of the organization, we are able to choose projects that we would like to fund and contact them directly about any questions that we have,” she says.

Indeed, the absence of organizational red tape, coupled with Asha’s non-hierarchical structure has enabled a diversity of project types and an extensive geographical outreach within India. There are currently 385 projects spread across 24 states. Some recently funded projects highlight this diversity: In Jharkhand, Asha Stanford funded a science laboratory for Jagriti Vidyalaya, an NGO dedicated to rural reconstruction; in Madhya Pradesh, Asha Seattle funded research on child disabilities in partnership with Sambhavna Clinic, which provides medical support to survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy.

Seed funding from Asha has often proven critical for the success of unique educational programs that may have been overlooked by mainstream funding agencies. “For our Government School Adoption Program, funding from Asha helped in providing additional teachers to the schools, which was a critical need. Though the schools had an enrollment of 250 students, they only had four teachers appointed by the government,” said Ram Krishnamurthy, coordinator of the program to strengthen government schools in Karnataka.

The ease of joining Asha is part of its appeal. Volunteers can join a chapter close to them, or if none exists, they can start one after a period of affiliation with an established chapter. The prerequisite for being a volunteer is a desire to do something for underprivileged children in India by raising funds for NGOs in India that are working to improve their plight. A chapter is free to decide what projects to fund, as long as the programs are secular and have an education component. The volunteers in each chapter democratically select a proposal to support in each funding cycle, and these must be reviewed through the main Asha data base—monitored by volunteers—before funds can be disbursed.

Volunteers in Asha’s chapters outside India recognize the limitations of monitoring projects from thousands of miles away. That’s where Asha’s large Indian volunteer base proves helpful. “Asha chapters in different partsof the world often contact our volunteers for information on projects in our vicinity. We also help them conduct site visits, monitor projects and file site reports,” says Sharad Jaiswal, chapter coordinator of Asha Bangalore.

“What attracts me to Asha is that, due to its decentralized structure, there is 100 percent transparency of funding, 100 percent efficiency as all the money is spent in India, and total oversight over projects because of the mandatory auditing requirements,” says James Minter, fundraising coordinator for the Asha chapter in Washington, D.C.

Though raising funds for education-related projects in India is central to Asha’s work, volunteers see raising awareness within their own countries as an equally important focus. “Asha has been a useful avenue for me to act on my interest in helping underprivileged children in India. In addition, it has greatly increased my own awareness about social issues in developing countries like India,” says Minter, who spends four months each year conducting site visits for projects funded by his and other Asha chapters. On his most recent trip in 2006, he spent three months viewing projects and learning about the socio-economic conditions of people living in Uttaranchal, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. He’s excited about his chapter’s upcoming awareness and fundraising events: an Indian documentary film festival, a marathon, and a concert.

“I had to risk losing my job to volunteer, and my family is against the unpaid work and use of personal resources,” he says. “The most rewarding part of my work has been visiting project sites and seeing the faces of children light up. Volunteering doesn’t seem like work to me, but is something that springs out of my soul.”

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The beautiful photos are courtesy Asha Zurich.

About the photos:

Two semi-professional photographers, André Urech (24) and Elia Marinucci (23) traveled in Autumn 2005 to India, in order to document development projects in the area of education. They focused on projects supported by Asha Zurich. Their intention was to document the
projects' contribution for the development of India and to present the information to Switzerland graphically and artistically.

The three photos were taken during classes at Akshardeep, which is an alternative school program initated by the NGO Swadhar in June 1998. This project is specially meant for children of sex workers and migrant labor in the age group of 6-12. They run 10 NFE (Non Formal
Education) schools in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) area and 10 in Pune Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) area. Asha Zurich is funding the running of the 10 classes.