Work with CORD in Sidhbari, India 2012

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.