Awesome to wake up to this — an indian summer features ichcha. We’ve been featured by an indian summer.
Spring is here !!!
Spring is here it seems! As I drove to work today – I was smiling and absorbing in the warmth of the beautiful shining sun and the sounds of the chirping of the birds! Why isn’t it like this every day I wondered and then realized that if it was like this every day, I wouldn’t have appreciated today as I am doing so now J !! That’s what is why we have the seasons – they help us appreciate the spring after a long cold winter. We appreciate and welcome autumn after a tiring hot summer!! isn’t that how life is too ? Where the ups and downs are like seasons. We just need to be smart enough to know that spring is around the corner and days won’t be so gloomy forever!
Ichcha, is hindi, for wish
Read about our brand Ichcha
The power of clothes
My sister asked me to look into an organization called Goonj to see if we can work on a collaborative with them. I was really impressed by what they are doing so I decided to Blog about it.
Goonj is an organization that simply puts clothing and other charitable products like furniture, books, medicine, etc to use for the poor, in exchange of the much needed development work in their communities in India. To explain, read the stories here . One of the stories explained here showed that under the “CLOTH FOR WORK” initiative, villagers joined to make a 240 ft x 6 ft bamboo bridge on a river for clothing. “It was a first for GOONJ and a moment of huge elation for the villagers who got involved in its making. No money involved voluntary labor by the villagers, under Cloth for Work.” — Goonj. Today this bridge connects many villages and has brought many other villages together to do the same!
A lot of us, and a lot of people we know, give clothes to the poor outside the temples in India. But we don’t know whether our goodness is really ending in a good deed or if it is actually used in harming the poor by maintaining their poverty. After all who wants to work if he/she is getting things for free all of his/her life. And this becomes their habit and nature for life. I believe that the ‘Cloth for Work’ initiative can break this habit by giving the poor an option to find respect for themselves by being able to live, compete, and grow. But this can happen only if we feed the poor with work and not a free treat.
You can help by just giving things from your home that you are not using. And we all know that we have a lot of them! The kind of things that Goonj can use are listed in the picture below.
For those of us who live abroad, but would like to help – please ask your friends and family in India to Give what they can to the centers in their area.
Click here for the list of centers where they can drop their items.
Thanks to Goonj for the photo
My thoughts for today …
I’ve been told that I should blog more .. especially for my “non-facebook” friends 😉 ! So here I am :). I’ve also been told not to put all these smiley faces in my sentences he he .. but I can’t help it. If I am smiling why not share it? You know what they say, “happiness grows when shared” !! Don’t you agree?
I’ve been working from my home office since I came back. Working alone in the office is slowly teaching me how important discipline and scheduling is for a self employed. You are fully responsible for your own actions or lack of, for that matter. But I would say that it is all worth it 🙂 !! It’s been so exciting making small successes; the kind I don’t think I’ve felt before. I start feeling like what was said in the Alchemist, that “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it’ :)! That is not to say that failures/obstacles are not there, or that the universe always gives me what I want. At this point, there are more uncertainties and obstacles than there are successes. But that’s where we learn our lessons from. If we pick up after stumbling from our obstacles, celebrate the small successes and continue believing in our dreams – what can’t be done?! If anything, at least you won’t ever regret not trying to achieve your dreams.
Back home …
Glad to be back home to my family and friends! It had been long!!! So long that I had started referring to ‘restaurants’ as ‘hotels’ ! Yup, that’s the Indian way to call a restaurant! Yeah I was in India! I traveled to the North, the South, the East, and the West of India and yet still the thirst is there to see more!!! Welllll THERE is a lot more left to see – but I guess what’s the next time for right 😉 ?? So, what else was I doing in India besides traveling?? Remember one of my previous blogs where I wrote about some Artisans we met in Gujrat/Bhuj/Karnataka etc .. well I have started working with them on an initiative to bring their work oversea, closer to us. This initiative, a wish willing to be fulfilled for a long time is now called Ichcha, literally translating to ‘a wish’ in hindi. I will write about that more in a few days. For now, I would like to share the pictures of ichcha’s beginning where with the artisans we are working a little while having a little FUN 🙂 …
DASTKAR BAZAAR
Dastkar, an NGO, dedicated to the crafts society, sets up a bazaar in major Metropolitan cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi. It’s definitely worth checking out this bazaar if you are interested in hand-made crafts and textiles from all over India! Moreover, they set up workshops all day at the Bazaar for anyone who is interested in learning say pottery or jewelry making or any other craft! There are also different kinds of food available for you to taste and buy – also home made! Music and dance is also set up for entertainment! All in all, it is a good place to spend a day or a weekend 🙂 For dates when the bazaars are setup, refer to their website – Dastkar.
Photos from Dastkar Bazaar in Banglore:
Ahsaay Baal Aashram
The other day, my cousin took me to an orphanage where they often go. The orphanage, Ahsaay Baal Aashram, is located and is surviving in a slum area called Nangloi. There were several boys there who are orphans, all adopted by this old man named Mr. Sharma. He started this orphanage with his wife. She passed away, but he has taken on her dream and is following it through, as his own.
Below is Mr. Sharma with the boys:
The boys seemed very disciplined; they are required to follow a schedule:
They are required to come and go to and from the orphanage in a group so that none of the slum kids harm them in any way. The kids from the slum are welcome to join the orphanage if they are orphans, but they choose not to. They prefer their life of “liberation”.
This is the space the 40+ kids share:
And it was great to see this computer room donated by several people:
A kid got up and narrated so beautifully – “Mat baanto insaan ko” (Don’t divide humans)
My cousin goes to this place usually for his kids’ birthdays to share new types of food and drinks with the boys – something they might have not eaten/drunk before. It brings a little bit of the outside world to their little orphanage. Any one is free to do the same. Or if you would like to donate, please go their website and see how you can donate. This is a place where you can rest assure that your money will be used for the right reasons.
Lakshay Badte Kadam (NGO)
My sister and I went to ‘Dastkar’, an NGO in Delhi, and met Ms. Laila ji, the chairperson and co-founder of Dastkar. Dressed in a crisp sari, with short bouncy hair, she seemed to be a strong woman with a modern outlook and very Indian values. Soon, in our conversation we found out something common between us – that our dads were diplomats in the Indian Embassy. This enabled us to chit chat about our experiences as children of diplomatic parents. But then that’s another story 😉
About Dastkar, we learned how it started and what its objectives are, from Ms. Laila ji. One of the objectives of Dastkar is to encourage and give a platform to smaller NGOs working with the “lower class” communities. Jan Sandesh is one of those NGOs that is supported by Dastkar and works with the women in the slum (see previous blog). The other small NGO that Dastkar promotes is ‘Lakshay Badte Kadam’. It is a very small NGO run by Ramesh who is working out of his house. He supports 13 street children whom he provides shelter and food in his own house, and he sends them to school, and he also teaches them how to make jute bags in their free time. These children, who might have normally ended up in the streets with no education and bad company, today at least have a chance to a better life. Lakshay Badte Kadam makes jute & recycled fabric bags. They also make bags out of recycled newspaper.
A day at the slum
Our day at a slum in New Delhi was very interesting but also very uncomfortable! The majority of the people who lived there are garbage collectors. As soon as we walked into this area, we saw that the people were living side by side with the the garbage, tied in 10 feet+ large white bags! There were uncountable flies everywhere – a very disease prone area! Most of the houses that we saw were concrete, not tents as I had expected. This confirmed that this slum was one of the better slums of India, but a slum nevertheless. I managed to take a few pictures on my iphone:
Avoiding the stares and unnecessary comments of these people, we made our way to this NGO called ‘Jan Sandesh‘ led by Shanti Paswan and Malathi. Jan Sandesh means Message to the People. This is a very small organization that started in 2000 but only started picking up a few years ago. However, even now they make very little things as they don’t get a lot of orders. Shanti and Malathi, the two ladies who we met, are working at Jan Sandesh on a volunteer basis, in other words, without any salary. They have employed 30 women from the slum who are willing to work on handicrafts. Shanti told us of various issues when it came to employing the women of these slums. She said that many of these women who are collecting garbage, do not want to do these handicrafts because it is harder and they can make more money collecting garbage in a month than they can by making handicrafts. It’s sad and unfortunate, but most of these people want to do nothing but get lot of money. Some other issues that Shanti told us are that some of these women leave after sometime because they get married and go away, or they have no interest in making these handicrafts, or they are simply lazy. I was surprised because I had ignorantly thought that any slum or poor person would happily want to take up “good” work – one that brought them “up”. But surprisingly, that is not the case. Shanti and Malathi have to work very hard with these women to convince them to work with the organization!
This organization started by re-using newspaper to make bags. Now they also make textile handicrafts and textile jewelery. It is definitely commendable to see these two women give their time and energy in a slum, which is know to get dangerous as the sun sets – just to make a difference! Below are some of the products they make :
Made from recycled fabric. It’s filled with cut up used plastic bags, that would have normally ended up in a landfill.
An IMPORTANT UPDATE about the post above – June 10 2011 (2 months later):
I’ve observed that by searching “Jann Sandesh” or “Shanti Paswan” or “seema puri”, a few people have come to this blog. I wanted to share with you my experiences with Jann Sandesh.
In April, after hearing about Jann Sandesh from Shanti Paswan and Malathi, I was very pleased and decided to work with this organization. We(Ichcha) gave them a few designs to work on. However, things didn’t end as they started. In fact, they ended soon after we handed them our designs. We were flexible, however, they didn’t even care to discuss any options. If Jann Sandesh is really what an NGO is supposed to be all about, they should have followed through what they started.
So for those of you who are thinking of working them, please be aware. Their intentions may not be as social as they seem to portray, after all.
Stars that looooooooop 