The Face of Change

A lot of people have asked questions about what kind of volunteer work am I doing in India. Today I'm going to talk about what I have been experiencing so far on that important side of my extended trip.

I have come to India through an AIESEC GCDP internship, which stands for Global Community Development Programme. My activities here are to be conducted within this FOOTPRINTS project, a nation-wide initiative of AIESEC that brings foreign volunteers to work with Indian NGOs dealing with unprivileged children. I have actually NOT started my "main" job as of this Dec 12th - the other foreigners and I are supposed to engage in some activities and social projects from a school from Barrackpore (a district near Kolkata) as some sort of integration first, and then we will come back to Kolkata to meet our host NGOs and start the "real" work. So the thing is that so far we have not been able to start yet and it's really frustrating  - but this unexpected inconvenience has not stopped us from stretching our legs around here, making some contacts, getting a feel for the local situation, and discovering ways to help.

Anahí, myself, and two of the Indian teachers

Yes, I am saying "us" because I'm not alone on that boat. There is this incredibly friendly and funny mexican girl Anahí Sosa who is also a part of the FOOTPRINTS project. I'm currently living with 4 other foreign interns, but the others are part of another project, which is environmentally-oriented. So, when it comes to social projects, Anahí is usually my company, which is to say it's bound to be a lot of fun.

Luckily for us, the principal of this Barrackpore school, Mr. Richard Gasper, was very kind in helping us to get around Barrackpore by referring us to nice projects and putting us in contact with the right people, so as soon as we expressed our desire to work with unprivileged children he referred us to Camille and Mr. Venkatraman (Venky). Today I will speak about Camille's work.


Barrackpore Avenue Women's Cultural & Social Welfare Society

This woman Camille is a friend of Richard's who is also a principal in another Barrackpore school. Her mother was the founder of school (which seem to be norm here - Richard's father was also the founder of his school), but she runs her social initiatives simultaneously.

Camille and us

Basically her society helps unprivileged children and the elderly, with a strong focus on women. Activities include taking kids out of the streets and into school, giving them basic education, vocational training, computer lessons, counselling and providing for everything they might need. Another branch of the initiative cares for the unprivileged elderly, taking them from the streets and providing medical care, shelter, food and clothing.

So Anahí and contacted Camille and she was very kind to take us to a tour. Our first stop was at the school in which she is a principal. That is a private school, but she could pull some strings so 25% of the students are unprivileged children that were granted some sort of scholarship. At the school we also met "Grandpa".

Grandpa

Usually, Camille's elderly shelter only take women, but one day she has found this old man lying in a train stration. He was suffering from severe malnutrition and other health problems. I can't even imagine the kinds of things he must have gone through to have been in a particularly inhuman condition even compared to the standards of indian poverty. Camille has brought him to the school, since he wouldn't be allowed at the women's shelter, and there she set him a room, private bathroom, clothing and television set. After his recovery, this man got so well along the students and schools staff that he became something of a father figure to everybody, and people call him Grandpa. He takes care of some things at the school, helps around on some errands. Even Camille's ferocious dog (he has almost bitten me) is fond of him: Grandpa is the only person the dog allows to pet him, besides his own master. This is a really moving story about how reaching out to our fellow human beings can actually benefit everybody.

Grannies in the shelter

After the school, Camille has taken us to the orphanage/shelter she maintains in a local slum area. The place is actualy a two-story building in which the first floor is dedicated to the elderly shelter, and the second floor houses a dorm room and a classroom for children. Old grannies such as these are taken from the streets and cared for as best as can be arranged. Some of them have chronic or terminal diseases such as cancer, in which case they are given whatever comfort is possible. Also, and sometimes even more important, they are given dignity. And as a bonus, they receive a family. Since the orphanage is in the same building, there is this system where each of the grannies becomes the grandmother of three of the orphan kids, creating a bond of care and affection.

Me, Camille and the girls

Going up to the second floor, we are suddenly engulfed in a wave of warmth and energy from a bunch of noisy kids running and laughing and jumping and fighting and crying and singing and dancing all over the place. All these girls are orphans, the most part having been collected from the streets in different circumstances. Camille tell us that most of them have really tragic stories of abandonemt, abuse, exploration or extreme misery in their past. When they come into the orphanage, they have to pass through an adaptation and integration stage, as they are often aggressive, terrified or otherwise traumatized. Most of them had to fight for their lives in the streets, so they have to be taught what it is like to live in a community, to trust, to love, and just to be kids again. Judging by their behavior, I for one would never say they have such a sad background, as they all are constantly smiling and you can feel their happiness here. To me, this is the ultimate proof of the effectiveness of Camille's work.

The classroom

This house only receives girls. At the orphanage, the children receive basic education to prepare them to enter some sort of official school, as most of them didn't go to school and therefore would not be able to engage in a regular school environment. There are community teachers volunteering there to help with the teaching. Each girl has her chores to help keeping their place neat, and the older ones are taught to be take care of the younger and to take responsibilities. Things are mostly organized by a woman who lives there with her two toddlers: she was admitted to the orphanage after suffering severe abuse from her husband, and helps as a supervisor. All in all, theirs is a clean, organized, happy place to be.

Silly me being silly

These girls loved to be photographed

Three days after that, we went through a far more shocking experience. During our visit to the orphanage, Camille had mentioned her work within a red-light-district (brothel area) here in Barrackpore. Basically, Camille is trying to give the children of prostitutes working there a way out of the exploration cycle and misery that dominates their lives. Female children are almost always initiated on the mother's trade at ages as soon as 10 or 11, or are sold to pimps in other red-light-districts to go work there. All children are exposed to extremely degrading situations, aside from the extreme poverty that encompasses the whole vicinity: I heard stories of children staying under the bed while their mothers were with their customers, beatings and all sorts of abuse. Anahí and I asked Camille to take us there, and she said she would try to arrange things, and so after three days we went there.

We drove around tortuous streets into a very poor slum area in Barrackpore. Camille told us that this slum was right next to the red-light-district. After a certain point, the car would not go further and we would have to walk into the district itself, as there were no roads there. 

Kids at the red-light-district in Barrackpore 

From the exact same second we got out of the car, a huge mob formed around us. Foreigners seldom (if ever) visit that part of the city, and everybody wanted to take a look at those two white-skinned aliens, one of which was also a giant. That was actually the first time I have ever feel threatened in any way in India: the kids were of course extremely friendly, but the man around (they were customers from the red-light-district, coming and going) and especially the women were clearly unhappy about us being there. That is a dangerous place, and we were causing so much of an uproar that Camille decided it was better for us to move out than to run into problems. Even so, I had the time to take one photo. One of the these kids is only 10 years old and she is already a sex worker. It is likely that the other ones will be pushed the same way.

So what Camille is doing is trying to win these children a better chance. She tries to speak to their mothers and even the pimps to convince them to let the girls go to school, and to be cared for in other aspects as well. This is a lot like what she is already doing with the other unprivileged children elsewhere, but much more dangerous and difficult, because taking the girls out of that situation is basically hurting the future of the business going on there, and the pimps there are all too aware of that. She has been threatened numerous times, and says that a lot of NGOs has passed through this area, but the go away as soon as they discover the difficulties and risks involved. Even so, she is there.

Bottom line, her work is simply fantastic. However - and this is a hallmark of a lot of social entrepreneurs - she is never satisfied. She keeps repeating that she could do so much more if only she could get more resources and workforce. She also says that the main problem preventing her from really expanding is her lack of connections, promotion and international exposure. I think this is where we can really come in and help. I would love to really get my hands on this job, but we have to go back to Kolkata to our "official" job, and will only be staying in Barrackpore for a few more days. So Anahí and I have decided we have two main fronts in which we can help: 1) we can make a bridge between her organization and AIESEC, so maybe she can receive foreign trainees to work with her; 2) we can set a website/blog or other kinds of promotional material in other to make more well-known, so she can receive donations from all around the world. This is really going to make a huge lasting impact for the organization, and we have some huge ideas going on here. I will keep you all posted! =)

In another post, I will speak about Mr Venky's work, which deals with the education of deaf, dumb and blind children. It has been so incredibly inspiring to meet these amazing people, you can just feel their inner peace, and they are really the face of change in India: this is really, profoundly making a difference and changing people's lives. I just hope that I can say just a small part of that about my own life, when I look back after many years from now.