First impression, January 13, 2008
Ms. Mary Quagliata


Govind and Mukta are clearly the basic strength of the Trust, with Govind as the instigator and front man. This December of 2007, and part of January 2008, I’ve done a little work here at Sambhali Trust. I made a book with the girls and will finish it at the end of January 2008. I asked them some personal questions about their lives, hoping to get them to talk and open up a little. I asked questions such as, what makes you happy. What do you want for your future?

The girls wrote some, and we interviewed them again to get more information. They each made a mandala with oil pastels on colored paper, and then I took a photo of each girl. The book contains photos, writing snippets and mandala artwork. The book can be used for gifts or to promote the Trust.

These girls seem committed to the program and eager to work and to learn. They enjoy coming to Sambhali. They have already learned a great deal about grooming and handcraft, and I know that with more volunteers, the English will begin to be more integrated into the program.

Because these girls all come from economically stressed homes, and because they have not had many advantages in their lives, I think almost anything one can help them to learn is good to teach. Sometimes I think, as do others, that it is almost enough just for them to meet western women who are happily traveling by themselves, living on money they have earned with their own labor. Even at my age, I often feel glad to be able to say that whatever money I have to spend, I have earned by myself.

But I also feel that because these girls would be best served by getting them into schools and educating them. Nothing really can better what happens to the mind when it is exposed to good teachers and great books. Unfortunately, India’s teaching methods are on the whole, very poor. People here don’t learn to think creatively or to solve problems. The teachers are boring and students learn by rote. But if the girls were able to study at excellent schools and learn to really think about social issues, political issues and philosophical issues, if they could by some miracle emerge from the thick layers of superstition and subservience that dominates them, they would become civic leaders. With this in mind, I feel a good thing to do would be to try to raise money from donors specifically for education, perhaps targeting and profiling a particular girl.

It is also important to continue the work of building self esteem by asking the girls to write about themselves and describe their lives. They need to begin to see themselves as valuable IN THEMSELVES, not related to their status in society. They need practice at finding their feelings and expressing their feelings. (It surprised me that almost none of the girls I interviewed had a personal answer to “What makes you happy?”} Any way that you can help them to unfold, psychologically, will benefit them, and they will pass this on to their children in the future, girls and boys alike.

The situation in Setrawa is very different. There we are now working with a middle class merchant population. But generally, the village is quite backward, biased and ignorant. The village is more segregated than the city. Castes remain very much in place. For awhile, it bothered me that I was teaching women and girls who came to school more from boredom than from a real desire to learn. But I now feel that there is such deep seated conservatism in the village that any little jolt to the tired system that exists there will help the community.

I recently learned that Govind WANTS to integrate the Dalits into the school, and I know that as this integration progresses there will be some radical changes in the village. I wish I could come back in a year to see what will happen.

Environmentally there is much that can be done in Setrawa. Sewage HAS to be worked on and trees NEED to be planted. It seemed to me that it was only laziness on the part of the village council that prevented the sewage pipes from being fixed. It is clearly only a refusal to spend money that is preventing the villagers from planting trees, because they do want trees. (The trees can be planted directly into the waste drainage areas.) The great thing about Setrawa is that the village is so small that anything can be fixed quickly and easily, but the village is simply not “forward thinking.” It is conservative and set in its ways, and each villager thinks only of their selves and their own family. But from my brief time spent in the village, I saw that the young kids are NOT so conservative. They listen and they learn, and they listen and respond to ideas and questions that are put to them.