iBus

iBus, empowerment on wheels, will aggregate and bring growth opportunities for girls at their doorstep! iBus is in the ideational stage and designed to be applied in India. Hopefully, Sambhava can gather the required feedback, experience and funding for the iBus soon.

The Idea

iBus (can be interpreted in Hindi as ‘bus has come’) is conceived as a mobile training and informational program for girls in India who need extra guidance and encouragement to achieve their dreams. This initiative will offer a menu of workshops including professional development, innovative leadership, technical skills, health care, home-based entrepreneurship and personal counseling to the girls enrolled in the Government schools in India. Government schools cater to the lower economic strata of society and offer basic educational facilities. Students in government schools, especially girls, are not encouraged to fully develop their capabilities and support their livelihoods. iBus, a mobile training/counseling facility, will impart the necessary skills and guidance to enable the girls to create new visions and realities.

[Continue Reading]

Photo courtesy: UNC-IntraHealth Blog

After three-plus years of “working in India,” last month I finally had the opportunity to actually work in India. Prior to my UNC-IntraHealth Fellowship, I worked on a program promoting reproductive health in five countries, including India. While I had the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates, something always seemed to get in the way of my plans to explore India. Thus, I was thrilled that my fellowship commenced with documenting the USAID-funded Vistaar Project’s interventions improving maternal, newborn and child health, and nutritional status in India.

This documentation process involved collaborating with IntraHealth colleagues in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand to capture Vistaar’s impact. It involved capturing hours of video and audio footage, taking thousands of photographs, enjoying several chai breaks, and eating lots of mangos. Through the documentation process, I became passionate about the project’s efforts to reduce the number of maternal and newborn deaths through strengthening the capacity of frontline health workers to conduct safe deliveries.

Continue reading

Project Welcome Home Troops

When we think of change and empowerment, the traditional target segments includes women, children and youth. Enhancing access to educational, economic and health resources is the most common approach for empowering communities. However, for some people the challenge is dealing with their fears, anxieties and personal traumas. The usual tendency is to view these challenges as personal and not the responsibility of the community. Such challenges may afflict the individual but these originate in and impact the community at large. We can’t expect to empower communities when some members are struggling to deal with their personal anxieties.

One such segment is the veterans returning home from the conflict zones. Normalizing their lives and integrating them into the mainstream is crucial to creating healthy communities. In the midst of other competing priorities relating to development goals, the tendency is to overlook the needs of the veterans. Even though it’s not on the priority radar of the non-profit community, addressing the psychological needs of the veterans is crucial.

20% of U.S. returning veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing emotional numbness, anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks and nightmares that result in difficulty returning to their normal home and work life. Without tools to manage these symptoms, some veterans are left to cope through alcohol and drugs. About 18 veterans in the U.S. commit suicide every day, a rate now higher than that of combat fatalities.

Open to veterans of all ages and from any war, Project Welcome Home Troops uses transformational breathing techniques to reduce anxiety, deal effectively with strong emotions, increase resiliency and energy, and improve overall performance. Researched at the University of Wisconsin, these techniques are taught over a six-day course and help veterans take back control of their minds and emotions, as they continue the practices on their own.

Continue reading

Mentor Together

Initiatives aimed at empowering specific segments of the community contribute in diverse ways to impact social norms and build social capital. Education opportunities for girls from economically challenged background improve literacy while inspiring the girls to make informed decisions, understand, and demand their rights. New ideas, thought processes and behavioral changes introduced by capacity development projects impact intra-community relations and inspire new possibilities. One such initiative in India is investing in youth from less-privileged groups while introducing a new sense of community bonding and creating vibrant social linkages.

Mentor Together operates formal youth mentoring programs, aimed at providing disadvantaged youth groups support through a volunteer mentor. As a pair, mentor and mentee work through a curriculum designed and structured by the Mentor Together team. Mentors work on improving mentees’ life skills, and helping them pursue their academic and career goals. The mentor-mentee interactions are facilitated through on-line and face-to-face sessions. The pilot in Bangalore, during November 2009-April 2010, served 20 mentees to build diverse skills and explore new opportunities. Currently, the program is being implemented in Mysore at Balakiya Bala Mandir, a Government Home for Girls, run by the State Department for Women and Child Development.

Mentor Together model heavily draws from Granovetter’s ‘Social Network Theory’. According to this theory resource mobilization, upward mobility, and social adaptation are correlated with social networks that are large and diverse as opposed to small and intimate. For disadvantaged youth, non-kin mentors can serve can as ‘bridging ties’, offering information and social contacts in areas like education and employment, which cannot be found in their existing social networks.

Arundhati Gupta, the founder of Mentor Together, belongs to the generation of social entrepreneurs who opt out of lucrative careers to contribute to sustainable change in their communities. After receiving a Master’s degree in Finance from Manchester Business School, Arundhati returned to India in 2009 and with the help of Dr. Rajeev Gowda, professor at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore launched Mentor Together.

Continue reading

Sambhava is an attempt to create many such ripples and highlight the impact of numerous ripple-creating endeavors elsewhere.

The world we live in is not without challenges – grim economic situation, political instability, climate change, gender discrimination and resource scarcity stare us in the face. But never before in the history of mankind have so many individuals, organizations, governments and corporations dedicated substantial time, effort and resources for finding and implementing solutions to the problems we face. The challenges are numerous but the solutions are smarter and creative. Whether it is the research of college graduates to use rice husk to power remote Indian villages or the strategy of crowdsourcing investment capital for a woman entrepreneur in Africa – our ingenuity at creating solutions has been impressive and worthwhile.

Through Sambhava, thetrajectory will highlight ideas and efforts that contribute to imaginative solutions and infinite hope. Sambhava is not just a blog; it is an affirmation that every problem has a solution and we are responsible for designing and implementing these solutions.

Economic, social, cultural and political realities are central to designing and implementing community empowerment projects across the globe. While social sciences analyze challenges and changes in society, the nonprofit community, along with government and corporate agencies attempt to address challenges and contribute to change. This collaborative process of understanding and effecting change, inspired a shift in my approach. I’m excited that my experience allows me to objectively analyze issues and be part of the change.

thetrajectory will henceforth highlight concerns of and developments in the nonprofit sector while continuing with occasional commentaries on social and political issues in South Asia. thetrajectory will attempt to weave holistic conversations around the factors that either challenge or change our communities.  The quest of thetrajectory is still to comprehend change or the lack of it in our communities but from a different vantage point.

The articles on thetrajectory are reflections of my personal opinions and do not represent views of any organization or program with which I may be associated.

Hoping that you’ll join thetrajectory on its new journey!

Pandora's Box: The Black Money issue in India

The Hindu Cartoonscope and Amul Butter cartoons continue to be a great way to capture news in India with humor and satire. This Year in Review presents a montage of cartoons from the two sources to present the highlights of what happened in India in 2011.

Reports of political scams and corruption continued to surface throughout 2011. 2G allocation, hoarding of balck money and illegal mining at Bellary were some prominent ones.  Continue Reading

Whenever I have entered into a chat with an Indian, there have always been feelings of goodwill and kindness for each other as people. This mutual respect between the people of India and Pakistan who communicate online tells volumes about how deeply the people of both the countries admire and appreciate each other in actuality. This fact is unlike what the media often depicts the situation between people to be. I have found Indians to get more interested in knowing better about me as a Pakistani and also about my country. This indicates an attempt on their part to bridge the gaps and understand. If you have understood another human being, you have connected.

First of all, they are amazed to see that I know Urdu and can speak it fluently as my mother tongue. Indians admire Urdu language, or so at least has been my experience when I tell them that Urdu is my first language. The heritage of Urdu literature in India has unique position in its culture and history. The second fact that strikes them is to know that I am from Karachi, which is a city they must have heard a lot of things about; some good, some bad, but always arising a sense of wonderment about Karachiites. Karachi is not much different than one of India’s own largest cities, Mumbai. Hence, many common things come to the fore when sharing experiences about life in these metropolitans. I don’t for one understand how based on similarities of backgrounds from this perspective, people can differ.

They instantly want to know what I think about India and the Indians, and I tell them that I honestly admire India and its people. The thing that inspires me most about India is its cultural colours and diversity. India is an extraordinary example of diverse groups of people living under one flag. Though that there are differences and grievances, but then there is also a feeling of brotherhood and love for one another under the tri-coloured national banner. If considered from the aspect of Muslim population of India, then it is the second largest country to have the highest number of residential Muslims, which is almost three times more than Pakistan.

Just as its melodious culture of music and dance and celebratory nature in every aspect of life, I love the Indian national anthem, which is just as beautiful as the country itself. None of the Indians that I have ever chatted with, and there are a quite a lot of numbers that I did, said that India and Pakistan could never be peaceful together. This proves that the educated people, the informed class on both sides of the border want peace and co-existence. The feeling is never of going to war, as it has resulted in nothing for either lands except death, destruction and deprivation of chances to move ahead. I think we should have evolved as people by now to not initiate arms struggle. There should be no space for immaturity and regrettable conduct.

In fact, we all agree that India and Pakistan can not only be peaceful together, but that they can also spread this message of peace and love to other people around the world, if only the things are not politicized by the war mongers who monetize on hatred and dissidence. If only the wishes of the people are paid heed to and shown at various levels of media can the world know that the love that exists between an Indian and a Pakistani is forever that of brotherhood and of compassion. We are like two brothers who are though distinct in their identities, yet connected with the same origin of land and cultural heritage.

Hence, competition between our cricket teams or between our cultural talents is nothing more than a competition that is held within a family to derive out the best in them. The peace is there, let the peace be out in the open so that its sweet smell can comfort us and lead us with a feeling of goodness and camaraderie toward one another. People of both the countries need better education, efficient health care and equal opportunities of employment. Both have had enough with wars and conflicts and spending of large portions of their budgets each time on defense, when they should be expended on innovative research and development of society.

Thus, there is no love lost between the two states and its caring people. Let there never be an air of hatred. I say Jai Hind and Pakistan Zindabad. May the people of both the sides live in harmony to make South Asia a beacon of peace and prosperity where hatred is disqualified to enter their lives ever again.

[Continue Reading]

[Continue Reading]