 By Deepa Ganachari '04
Recently, my project has begun to focus on adolescent girls – kishoris as they are called in Marathi– and with promoting their access to health information. As part of this project, my team creates and works with village ‘youth groups’. Through these groups, health and life-skills education can be introduced, and thus far a handful of them have been formed in the twenty villages in which I work.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 By Samina Akbari '03
“Kem cho Paba Ben?” I call as we rest our backpacks on the edge of her small compound, brimming with the materials for today’s class. I hear no response but know that she is in the kitchen, making shak and rotli for her husband and six children. If it is hot in the sun, I know it is even hotter in the small earthen enclosure where she makes bread on an open flame. “Paba Ben, I’m going to call the other women to class,” I yell, as I head off toward the middle of the hamlet. “Bale,” she says, “Ok.” Anjali and I spend the next half hour going door to door reminding women that class starts in twenty minutes, and even though we return ten minutes late, no one has arrived. Because the women with whom we work do not live by the clock, we must wait. They rise with the sun, fill water from the well when they run out, and cook the evening meal as the sun sets. They have never been to school or worked a job, so timeliness is a foreign concept. Propriety confines them to their hamlets and often to the six or seven homes in their fariya (subcluster). They are allowed to venture out only to visit the hospital or to attend a wedding. Their lives, for the most part, take place in their homes, at their own, natural pace.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 By Gandhrav Telhan '04
Geetanjali arrived at the HELP hostel two weeks ago. She
has been a railway child for most of her life. Her mother passed
away when she was young and her father remarried soon afterwards.
Geetanjali’s mother-in-law did not want to take on responsibility for
her so she gradually forced Geetanjali out of the house, as her father
stood by and watched. Geetanjali has been traveling on the Indian
Railways ever since, sleeping in trains, on platforms, eating from
garbage cans, doing whatever it takes to get by. She has been
severely abused verbally, physically, and sexually by various
individuals throughout here journey. Recently an unknown
individual capitalized on Geetanjali’s vulnerability and forcibly sold
her to a brothel in Guntur District. A staff member of one of the
partner NGOs that HELP, an NGO focused on prevention of trafficking of
the children of commercial sex workers, works with was making her
regular checkup at the brothels when she noticed a new face. Geetanjali
was rescued immediately and brought to the HELP home in Prakasham
District. Upon arriving at the youth hostel Geetanjali simply
laid on the floor for hours and hours at a time starring off into
nothingness, as if she were still in a train heading towards an unknown
destination.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 By Sushil Jacob '05
I live upstairs above the training center of the Amhi Amachya
Arogyasathi campus. The NGO frequently holds trainings at the
center, right outside my room, for villagers and NGO staff alike.
After my first month of living there I was bothered by the fact that
every time one of these training programs finished I would have to
suffer the consequences of dirty bathrooms, lack of water, and a bad
smell outside of my room. Many of the people who came simply did
not have respect for the public areas of the NGO and since I was
sharing this space with them, I had to live with the
consequences. This irked me very much because I would often wake
up in the morning to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth and find the
water taps left open, and the water consequently finished. Thus I
would have to go to the house to do my morning routine. I would
find food waste placed in my bathing area, my toilet frequently
unflushed, and my sink full of disgusting spit and dirt. It was
unbearable at times.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
One Event, Many Lessons... |
|
|
|
 By Nishant Shah '05
SMACK. CRUNCH. The sudden sound of
flesh-hitting-metal-rickshaw and the jarring thud with which the
vehicle comes to a stop snaps me out of my smog-induced
daydreaming. On the road behind us lies a drunken man in tattered
clothes who wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time, a modest
sized hole in his head leaking more than modest amounts of blood.
I yell frantically for the rickshaw driver to stop but he increases
speed; I jump out and run back to the scene of the accident. Stupid rickshaw drivers, they obviously don’t care about anyone but themselves.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
 By Anjali Dotson '06
My second day at the women’s health
clinic in Khavda, and I settle into a dusty lawn chair beside the nurse’s desk
as she cycles through patients. She seems to work with an urgency that suggests
if she slows her pace so too will the world pause in revolution. I listen
intently as they share their stories of acidity, fever, and stomach cramps,
even though I glean few details from their Kutchi—to me more like the steady
but deliberate raindrops thumping against dry earth. It’s almost like watching
a time-lapse video and my mind shifts into a lower gear.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
|
| Results 32 - 37 of 37 |
