Sidhbari India April
2012
Chinmaya
Organization for Rural Development (CORD)
-Tia Dorn, Supriya Nair, Natalie
Pagoria, Erin Stratta
Five soon to be graduating M4 women found their way to a small town in Himachal Pradesh to support a local organization doing amazing work. Despite the joy of our impending MD degrees, we were humbled, awed and inspired by the dedicated men and women working every day to improve lives in rural India. We were fortunate to learn about and support this wonderful organization during our time in India, with the goal of aiding their fundraising process for a new center. We hope you enjoy the photos and posts. Please visit http://www.cordusa.org/ for more information.
In Pictures - Just a few of the amazing projects they support: micro-lending, artisan skills, training young professionals and disabled artists, training volunteer rehabilitation workers, working with physically disabled house to house, providing training to improve farmers' crops, speech/language therapy, PT/OT, health for migrant workers in slums, improving public schools, adolescent women's leadership groups.
Sidhbari Reflection 1:
It was still dark outside, not yet
dawn and all along the streets there were people sleeping. Little boys and girls, lying with their
families on the sidewalk, vendors sleeping on their vegetable stands, and
various elderly folk lying on concrete doorsteps and against the metal covering
of closed shops. It was our first day in
India. It’s an image that stays with me now that I’m home and occasionally becomes an unwelcome thought
as I lay down to sleep on my cushy, queen bed with a foam mattress topper. These thoughts continue as I step into my
shower with heated water readily available, as much as I want—not a cool bucket bath that I hesitated
to turn on the water heater for, because hey, it wasn’t America and electricity
was expensive. It continues as I have my
morning coffee, that didn’t have to be made with boiled or filtered water
because it’s otherwise not safe to drink.
We had all been reading the Hunger
Games before the start of the trip, so the analogy of the wealthy citizens of Panem
and 5 American medical students use to having everything we want at the touch
of a finger, was easily made.
But feeling sorry for the people
and disheartened by their lack of resources didn’t last long. I soon found myself impressed, inspired and
humbled by the incredible women I met in the villages. They are responsible for all the cooking,
cleaning and child-rearing, on top of making crafts/clothing in their “spare
time” that they sell at the market to provide more income for their families. They
don’t have Sundays off, they don’t get federal holidays and they don’t have
daycare. Yet, when we met with our volunteer organization, CORD, to visit the women’s groups that were having
trouble with their micro-loans, all I found were content, smiling women who were
excited to learn how to improve their business and honored to have us join
them. They were all very proud of the
work they had accomplished.
The system is set up by CORD to
form women’s groups that pool their money together to provide loans to one another
and teach them how to apply for them at their local bank, based on their
business propositions. The loans have to be reviewed and approved by every
member of the group before they are given or sought. The women are taught
either new skills or how to expand their previous knowledge of sewing and
crafts. They learn how to record and manage their finances, keep books and
increase revenue from their business by providing other markets to sell their
wares. In many cases, the women take leadership positions and teach what they
have learned to their neighbors. All of
this is facilitated by CORD but not subsidized by them. That way the local
program becomes self-sustainable should CORD ever leave the area.
In light of the experience we had
in India, I remain more appreciative of the resources I have now that I’m home.
We had a running joke while abroad called “first world problems.” This included things like having a dead
battery in my iPod, not having enough luggage space to pack souvenirs, and
having to sleep with fans instead of A/C.
I think as Americans we go on trips like these thinking of how we can
provide a little help to those less fortunate around the world, when the
reality is that we learned and gained so much more from them than they ever got
from us.
