Color My World

     You know those students who can sit through long lectures or read incredibly dense books and remember every single detail of it? Yeah, I wish I was one of those people.  I’m a visual learner—I need to see pictures, graphs, and have hands-on activities to capture my attention or else 1) I lose interest 2) I get distracted 3) I forget everything I just heard.

     I’ve seen different primary schools in Hyderabad’s slum communities, and to say they are lacking is an understatement. Envision one room, mostly barren walls, and lots of cute Indian kids. One of our partner NGOs, SAPID, expressed the need for educational murals to assist in the classroom learning process. Given my love of bright colors and artsy things, I decided to head up this project.  In the past few weeks, we’ve complete two schools and will be completing one more before the summer ends, and I’m so happy with how they’ve turned out.

     The district education leader saw the first school we painted and liked it so much that he wants all the schools in the slums to have similar murals, no matter how long it takes. He also said the children were so excited about it that they showed up at the closed school on Saturday to learn.

     It’s been fun designing and painting the murals, but even more rewarding to know that hundreds of kids will be affected by this project. It has been reaffirmed to me of the importance of educating children, especially if they want to have opportunities to have a better livelihood in the future. 

Health Education

     When I decided to come to India with HELP, I knew there would be many opportunities to gain some real-life experience in my major, public health. Upon getting here, I learned that one of the biggest problems for people living in the slums is tobacco and alcohol abuse. Men in these communities earn about 200-300 rupees a day, which is about $4-6, while women earn about half of that. By spending a substantial amount of their already meager income to feed their addictions, individuals and communities are greatly affected.

     We’ve been conducting classes to educate the men and women about the effects of their alcohol and tobacco use. In addition to causing numerous health problems, it often leads to more abuse within families, and it can financially limit them from things like sending their children to school or buying enough food and water.

     Although we hope that every person who comes to our classes will immediately stop using these substances, we know that this is probably unlikely. However, we do set realistic goals with the individuals on changes they can make. I’ve seen how excited many of them are, especially the women, to share what they’ve learned with others, so we’re glad that we’ve planted the seeds for successful behavior change.

     Here are some photos from three classes we’ve had in the past couple weeks:

Our translator, Urmi, has been invaluable in reaching across the language barrier we face while teaching. 

  

 

Bridge Camps

     One of my favorite things about being here in India is seeing so many happy children all the time. They love to wave to us on the streets, smile at us on the buses, and laugh with us when we play together. And truth be told, I absolutely melt when I see kids walking in their perfectly matching school uniforms and larger-than-their-body backpacks.  Although I want to believe that all the kids I meet live carefree lives, I know that’s not the case for many of them.

     We have a great partner that our team is working with called the MV Foundation. They are dedicated to taking children out of illegal child labor jobs and getting them into school. Because the children have to test into government schools, MV set up “bridge camps” where kids who are behind in grade levels can catch up to the levels where they should be.

     For one of our Friday service projects, we visited one of these bridge camps and taught the boys different sports games. They absolutely loved it! These children have all different stories for why they are in the camps, including their parents were killed or commit suicide, or just can’t support them anymore. It was eye opening to be among kids who have experienced so much at such young ages, but I’m glad we could spend even a small amount of time with them to be their friends.

They were SO excited to play cricket. I'm still confused on the rules, but I like it! 

I know I shouldn't pick favorites, but these two boys were so cute.

MV provided lunch for us: rice with ladyfingers (a common vegetable) and a broth.  I learned that many people here eat just with their right hand, and the boys were laughing at how silly we all looked. 

Namaste!!

So I've officially been in India for one week, and I am loving it! I'm here for the rest of the summer with the organization HELP International doing humanitarian/development work. We've been meeting with other local NGOs for the past few days, and they have so many awesome projects to work on! As of now, I'm planning to help teach a tobacco and alcohol class, work on a campaign to raise awareness about missing children in India,  assist one of our other volunteers’ GLOW group that helps empower young girls in the slums, and help to do case studies that highlight the lives of young children in bridge camps. I quickly realized that doing sustainable projects here is not going to be easy, but I think it will be very rewarding.

In the meantime, I’ll let some pictures show some of the things I’ve experienced in the last week…

I was scared to get in a rickshaw for the first time because I was convinced we were going to crash. Everyone weaves in and out of traffic like crazy, and the honking never stops.

Oh, and we fit 10 people in one once.

 We’ll be coming to the slums regularly for Alee’s GLOW (Girls Empowering Our World) Group. Some of the young girls who attend are in school, and others work in domestic labor jobs. Often times their parents can’t afford school for them or they send their sons instead. It’s a humbling place to visit, for obvious reasons.

These women are in desperate need of more water and will wait long hours to fill just one bucket for their family.

It's hard to imagine how people live in these kinds of conditions. 

You could probably have guessed this, but India is not exactly known for its cleanliness and sanitation. Trash is everywhere, and I’m now accustomed to seeing men pee on the streets frequently.

I’m feeling more and more grateful that I don’t have an extremely sensitive sense of smell.

After two days of hot weather, we got to experience monsoon season at its finest. The streets quickly flooded, and we got to walk through it all—hello trash, sewage, and lots of human waste…

In addition to stray dogs and the occasional cow roaming the neighborhood, I saw a monkey on a street corner while walking home from church. Enough said.

I don’t think the individuals where we live have seen too many white people before, so we attract a lot of attention when we go most places. People will often stare, smile and wave, or ask to take pictures with us. I’ve never felt like more of a celebrity than when we visited Golkonda Fort, a historical site here in Hyderabad.  Men, women, and children would come up to us and would say, “Photo? You from where?”

 Life is not easy here. Just walking along the main street we see beggars, individuals with ragged clothes and no shoes,  people with physical deformities that likely could have been prevented, and those who are struggling and in need of help. I know that despite all these things, many people here are happy, and I’m amazed by it.

To be honest, I’m not sure how good I’m going to be about this whole blog thing, so make sure to also check out our team blog! :)