Reflections upon Summer 2012 - Natalia Choi

Team member, Natalia Choi reflects on her experience in India working with ITSA Summer 2012

I guess the word I would describe my overall experience with India would be “Up Close.” This word has been in my head since the first day of the trip when little kids came knocking (and some climbing) on our van for money until the last night when our group gathered in a circle at night to share things we appreciated about each other. Being with around 12-20  people throughout the trip (I realized just how around people I had been when I was waiting alone in the Delhi airport for 12 hours…), we were first of all, physically “up close.” Everyday, we shoved ourselves into the 9-person “tourist vehicle” van, squeezing in and sitting on top of one another. Our record I’d have to say was the time when we left the drive-in theater when we fit 10 people in a small compact vehicle meant to fit maybe 5~6 people at most. And since we stayed together as a group most of the time, we spent A LOT of time with each other especially at Riana’s grandparents’ apartment which acted as the headquarter office for ITSA in India.

During my time in India, I also met wonderful people like my host family, Riana’s family, the ITSA India team members, and my workshop students. From them, I got to learn a little more about the Indian culture and also realize the culture I’m coming from. I’ve especially enjoyed meeting Riana’s grandmother “Dadi” who has fed us (almost literally since she stood over us at each meal to make sure we were getting plenty of chapatis to eat). Though I wasn’t always able to meet her standard for eating enough, we bonded over time and made chapatis together during the final week. My host family was also amazingly sweet and made me feel right at home making me the best masala chai and packing me a delicious tiffin (a stacked metal lunch box) full of yummy vegetables, rice, and chapatis for lunch. The many Indian college students who also volunteered with ITSA were also really vital part of our “ITSA family.” As our guides, they helped navigate the crazy-ness that is India by helping us bargain, to not get lost in the streets, and to take rickshaws. As our friends, they introduced us to the latest bollywood hits which we danced to together and celebrated festivals like Holi and Diwali.

Riana's Family, and their home crashers

The students I worked with in Ahmedabad and Rajkot also made this whole trip experience rewarding and inspiring. It was amazing to see how the lesson plans which we imagined were actually implemented to give ideas and thoughts for the students. I was especially excited for the lesson plan on modern day slavery since it is an issue that I had been much interested in. In this lesson, we first started by asking the students whether or not they thought slavery still existed in India. We had mixed opinions, some saying a definitive yes, some maybe in certain areas of the world, some “not in India.” So when students were given a fact sheet statistics and facts on modern day slavery, many were surprised by the magnitude of the problem. Through watching a video on child trafficking and continuing discussions about the effects of poverty on the security of human rights, students gained a deeper understanding of the complexity of the issue. Students also created a web with words like illiteracy, corruption, and globalization connected to slavery in order to learn about how interconnected issues were in society. I also shared my experience on leading a Fair Trade campaign during my high school to show them that high school students are very much capable of contributing a positive impact on the world. It was exciting to see how much students progressed throughout the workshops in understanding issues we discussed (slavery, corruption, gender discrimination, and environmentalism) and also in gaining a sense of social responsibility. Students cumulated so much energy to do something for the world that all the 60+ ITSAprenuers (workshop students) signed up to pursue social action projects at the end. Having worked with such an enthusiastic and bright group of students like our ITSApreneurs, I have gained more faith in the power of education and also hope for a better world.

How could I not? Doing my classic Natalia presentation spreading awareness about Fair Trade

Often times it seems that it’s the sites, the great monuments and museums that we pose in front of that we remember most after travelling. But I think once we get to spend more time in a place, it becomes the people we interact with and get to know that we remember most. Travelling with a large group in the second most populous country for five weeks, I think I’ve gotten to encounter people who’ve left a mark on the way I see the world. I’m grateful for having had such opportunity to meet such a fun and eclectic mix of people whom I’ll miss, but at least I have plenty of wonderful pictures (2000+) and unforgettable memories to look back on and smile on.

The Social Action Team in front of our 60 foot long mural!

My lovely host family!

Celebrating Diwali on our last night

Celebrating Holi, the festival of colors!

A day of ITSA-ing!

Just another day at the ITSA headquarters in Ahmedabad by team member, Arden Feil:

        This morning I arrived at Riana’s apartment around 11am to find the rest of the interns busy working on their curriculums for this Friday’s workshop. I quickly joined up with the rest of the Social Action and Justice team and we got to work planning for the workshop. 

Squeezed into the ITSA mobile!

Our upcoming session will cover gender issues and we made considerable progress in designing activities around the topic. After a nice lunch we all headed over the apartment in Paldi to continue working. Admittedly, by that point we were all a bit exhausted, so we were not nearly as productive as we had been in the morning. We relaxed and napped for a while (some of us even went in search of coconuts!) 


We did get a good amount of work time in too, and our lesson plan is pretty much complete for Friday. At about 6pm Riana and some of the India interns came and drove us over to Law Garden—a big outdoor market with vendors selling tapestries, clothing, and jewelry. It was definitely hectic and overwhelming, but also very exciting and exhilarating. A lot of the interns, including myself, found nice gifts to bring back for our friends and family. 

Colors! Colors! Colors!

Tejas helping navigate multiple sellers at the same time!

Neil getting his bargain on!

 We left the market just as it was getting dark and went to Swatti Snacks for dinner. We ordered a bunch of different dishes, which were all delicious and interesting to try. I’m now back at my host family’s house where I am enjoying some of my last nights before I move into the apartment in Paldi with the rest of the interns. Today was pretty calm and easy going; we got time to just hang around as well as have valuable preparation time. I think I speak for all of the interns when I say today was one of many great days we’ve had in 

Riana demonstrating to us the special technique to Pani Puri eating!

The Swatties (Swarthmore College students) pose under Swati snacks!

Heritage Walk: First Experience of Old Ahmedabad for ITSA's International Interns

Team Member Natalia Choi reflects on her day:

It was an especially hot day today in Ahmedabad. I mean everyday is hot, but today we didn’t have as much air conditioning since we were out and about the city unlike the past few days when we mostly stayed indoors resting and preparing for our workshops).

Guide, Nirav Patel, explaining the history of the Jumma Masjid
(Mosque) on the Heritage Walk in Ahmedabad

The day started out early at 6am because we wanted to avoid some heat and crowd for our Heritage walk through the old city of Ahmedabad. [We avoided neither the heat nor crowd…] As we waited for Aiyub, our driver to come pick us up, we spotted several monkeys on the roof of a building nearby. They were huge! I expected to see the little monkeys like Abu from Aladdin, but they were close to human-size (maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but they were not small cute creatures). Then came my turn for the rickshaw ride! Karen, Pavithra and I loaded up in this yellow-green rickshaw and our rickshaw weaved and honked our way through bikes, motorcycles, and cows toward the Old City of Ahmedabad. Because I didn’t have a layer of glass separating me from the outside, I felt that everything was even closer. I must say I am amazed that I have not been in or seen an accident yet given the chaotic nature of the streets. The cars seem to build their own system as they go. There seems to be no marked lanes, and rarely do we run into traffic lights. Here, our tour guide told us that to drive, one needs three things: good breaks, a good honk, and good luck. And from what I’ve seen, that seems to be true.

Though it was before 8am when we arrived at the temple (the starting point of our walk), there was no time for the morning calm. The place was packed with vendors selling their fresh produce, women in their beautiful saris, men biking through the crowded street. I had expected to encounter more tourists in this historic attraction, but soon realized that we were the only ones. We had become the focus of attention and many curious gazes followed our group.

We waited for our tour to begin upstairs where we had some distance to look at the site from a birds-eye view. It was nice to see and taken in everything and not be seen. Our tour guide arrived with a huge eager smile and began a presentation introducing Ahmedabad’s history dating back to the 15^th century. He was proud of the city’s smart planning (ex. buildings made of stone-wood walls which survived major earthquakes; doors leading to secret passages that only locals would know) and peaceful state (there are no “defensive” architecture). It was interesting to learn about how commerce and business helped maintain peace in the region because they formed business partners. For example, because the British relied on Ahmedabad’s textile industry, they developed and maintained a friendly relation. The Old City was divided in “pols” which are little neighborhoods that was originally organized based on profession/religion but later came to be based on class. Each pol has a gate, a public board, a temple, and a bird feeding tower. I was impressed by how people were sensitive enough to build these bird feeding structures to compensate for the birds losing their homes as the city expanded and cut down trees. Our walk took about 2-3 hours and we saw temples, a plethora of stray dogs, beautifully colored walls (very pastel-ly I thought), and then ended our tour at a mosque.

The rest of the day was spent viewing some Indian paintings and sculptures at the Institute of Indology, eating a scrumptious lunch at Havmor, a nicely air-conditioned restaurant, and resting at Riana’s great aunt’s house. Then we headed back to Riana’s apartment and dinner (a salty popped rice dish called bhel and sev puri, a taco-like dish) and returned to our prospective homes (for some, their host family’s house, for others, the ITSA apartment or Riana’s place) afterwards. Whew, what a full, wonderful day!  

Empowering Incredible Minds Who Can Work Towards A More Incredible India

Juliana (on the right) in action, talking to a group of  attentive students.

Traveling to India last summer as an Intern for ITSA has been one of the most significant and enriching experiences of my life. Besides encouraging critical thinking among young Indians, I had the opportunity to learn about a part of the world and a culture that was almost completely foreign to me.

Initially, it was evident that the kids participating in the workshops were students in a system that does not enable them to think creatively nor critically about themselves and their surroundings. Most of them described themselves as “disciplined”, but had a hard time identifying other idiosyncratic qualities in themselves. Encouraging them to write about their interests and curiosities was very interesting and fun, especially because they were very willing and excited about participating in the workshops everyday.

It is gratifying to know that education reform is not desired just by those who support global education reform and those who work with ITSA. It is also relevant to educators in the current Indian education system and most certainly by the kids themselves, who have come to realize that they are empowered by their own brilliant minds. 

During my time in India, I worked with Riana and Jwalin on ITSA’s workshop curriculum. The curriculum was mainly made of a series of writing exercises and group activities primarily centered on topics of identity. I revised the plan for each workshop before it happened. I made sure that the activities and writing prompts would be clear and appropriate for the kids. When discussing the plan for a workshop on spatial identity, or the different perceptions of a person, I brought up the idea of talking about stereotypes in Indian society with the kids. I thought it would be important to start promoting social awareness because social justice activism is another one of ITSA’s undertakings. As a team of interns and directors, we decided to do “the boat activity” with the kids: to expose them to a series of Indian stereotypes by asking them to save ten imaginative characters out of thirteen on a boat that was, fictitiously, about to drown. The characters could only be differentiated by single traits and social labels such as “beggar”, or “7-year-old maid who dropped out of school”. We wanted to make the kids think about themselves in relation to how others perceive them in their society, and how they view others based on societal stereotypes.

My host family was very loving and caring, especially Pavithra; my host sister. They were from Tamil Nadu, a state located on the tip of South India. Their food was very different than the North Indian food I had in restaurants. South Indian food is more spicy but equally delicious. My host father and I read the Indian news every morning over South Indian coffee, and showed each other family photos while sharing life anecdotes.

I enjoyed walking in the old city of Ahmedabad and observing people’s daily lives -women selling colorful vegetables that made an interesting contrast with the colors of their dresses, women cooking and washing their clothes while talking to their neighbors, and people meditating at various local temples. I remember smelling a Jasmin flower that a Hindu Pujari put in my hair after caressing one of his Gods with oil. 

Being able to appreciate and value Indian culture strengthened my sense of global diversity and inclusion. Besides, promoting critical thinking that will help young minds address social concerns in a country that is so rich in many other ways has encouraged me to continue to pursue youth empowerment. 

~ Juliana Gutierrez      

ITSA Intern-2011

Call for Applications: ITSA India’s International Internship Program 2012

ITSA India’s International Internship Program 2012

Would you like to experience India’s beautiful and unique culture first hand while living with a host family this summer?

Would you like to like to intern in India?

Would you like to contribute to education reform and social change?

If the answer to any of these questions is a “Yes!”, intern with Independent Thought & Social Action in India (ITSA India), an education reform organization running Social Action Training Camps that promotes critical thinking and social entrepreneurship to students in the traditional, rote memorization based Indian education system.

After an extremely successful first summer with interns from New York City, ITSA India is excited to announce applications for the internship program for Summer 2012! Read about the interns’ experiences from last summer on the ITSA blog: www.itsatravellog.blogspot.com.

Please visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/ITSAInternational.

ITSA Intern responsibilities:

We are looking for passionate, motivated and energetic people to join our team this summer. We will be running experiential learning workshops teaching social organizing skills.  ITSA is entirely staffed by interns and volunteers and we will be expecting the interns to play an extremely central role in carrying out the workshops this summer. Our team will consist of college students from the US and India.

Interns will teach workshops and be involved in documentation work, curriculum development, education research, social media, publicity, blog writing, video creation, graphic design and website development & design. 

ITSA, the Institute of Writing and Thinking at Bard College, and Training for Change in Philadelphia will provide training and orientation to all interns prior to their work in India.

About the City: Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

The city we will work in is Ahmedabad, the famous Mahatma Gandhi’s home during the Indian freedom struggle. We will have a trip to North India, which include places such as Delhi and Agra (home to the Taj Mahal). Experience the beautiful Indian culture, the delicious food, gorgeous monsoons, bustling markets, majestic forts, temples, palaces and all of the magic that makes India unique.

Housing:

Interns will be housed by warm and loving host families to gain an authentic immersion into Indian culture.

Program Dates: (Tentatively) Thursday, June 28^th, 2011 – Thursday, August 9^th, 2011 (6 weeks).

Program Cost:

The entire program will cost $1740. Transportation within India to all necessary ITSA and community service sites, home stay with an Indian family, three home-cooked meals a day and visits to sites within Ahmedabad & North India will all be covered.

Colleges often have grants/scholarships available to take on summer opportunities/summer internships abroad. The ITSA internship can also qualify for a research grant from your college if you indicate on your application that you are interested in doing research with us since we have research positions available as well. Check with your college’s summer opportunities office/career services.

The program costs also include a trip to the historic sites in North India including the Taj Mahal, Akbar’s Palace, Fatehpur Sikri, India Gate, Indian Parliament in Agra & Delhi.

[The cost does not include: transportation to Ahmedabad, personal spending money and visa application fees. Please note that similar organizations often charge three times our cost for similar length programs. The ITSA internship allows interns to truly make a difference in lives of students and to experience India from perspectives of Indian families while forming friendships with Indian peers.]

Application info:

The application requires filling out the online form and a recommendation letter from a professor or someone you have worked for. Here is a link to the application: http://bit.ly/InternInternApp. Recommendation letters and questions should be email to us at itsa@itsainternational.org.

Application Deadline: Wednesday, February 20^th, 2011.  

Testimonials:

“Choosing to send in an application to become an intern was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I cannot sum up its worth and importance so neatly . . . going to India and being an intern for ITSA affects me still, every day, and I am in all respects continuously thankful for the opportunity.”            


  ~Emma King, Intern 2011, NYC (Emma’s Article in the newspaper, Bardvark: http://bit.ly/sAkpEq)

“It was a FANTASTIC experience! The program more than exceeded our expectations - and the amount of work you guys put into ‘educating’ the interns about India was truly amazing. It was a great opportunity to both experience a different country and culture, and take on a leadership role.”
            ~ Juliana Gutierrez, Intern 2011, NYC

We will be happy to put you in touch with our past interns and their families if you wish to contact them for more information.

Sample Day:

Day 3:	Meeting the Mahatma
Morning	ITSA meeting The entire team will spend time reflecting, strategizing and preparing for that week’s ITSA workshops. Interns will also have this time to work on their individual or collaborative ITSA related projects.
Afternoon	Screening of the Bollywood film Lage Raho Munnabhai:         Through his interactions with the image of Gandhi, Munna Bhai, an amiable, good hearted, underworld don, begins to practice what he calls ‘Gandhigiri’ , the modern version of the Gandhian ideals of non violence and truth helping ordinary people solve their problems.         In this light hearted comedy about India’s father of the nation, Munna Bhai changes the way people think about non-violent change in the modern world applying Gandhi to the 21stcentury. A critically acclaimed film, it is the first Hindi film to be screened at the UN auditorium.
Evening	Tour of the Sabarmati Ashram: Mahatma Gandhi’s home         The Sabarmati Ashram (also known as Harijan Ashram) was home to Mohandas Gandhi from 1917 until 1930 and served as one of the main centers of the Indian freedom struggle. Originally called the Satyagraha Ashram, reflecting the movement toward passive resistance launched by the Mahatma, the Ashram became home to the ideology that set India free. Sabarmati Ashram named for the river on which it sits, was created with a dual mission: to serve as an institution that would carry on a search for truth and a platform to bring together a group of workers committed to non-violence who would help secure freedom for India.         Today, the Ashram serves as a source of inspiration and guidance, and stands as a monument to Gandhi’s life mission and a testimony to others who have fought a similar struggle. For more info: http://gandhiashramsabarmati.org/

 

Intern Max Baird’s Blog Entry about our visit to the Gandhi Ashram in Summer 2011

Before visiting Gandhi’s Ashram, I had a sense of who Gandhi was and what he stood for, but I didn’t really understand how large a role he had in the public conscience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was inspired by Gandhi, left a similar legacy to us, but not nearly to the extent Gandhi has for India. His Ashram was an incredibly peaceful place. An ashram is spiritual community, and we had gone to the one Gandhi lived in for thirteen years. Before entering Gandhi’s house, the ITSA team sat outside while a woman showed us how to spin thread. It was a calming activity, and the Ashram itself was quiet, something you begin to value more when cars begin honking at five A.M in New York City. 

It's not only Gandhi’s political achievements that I find so remarkable. If Gandhi had lived the way he did and spent his entire life in a small village, he would be no less extraordinary. I’ve seen a quote of his, “My life is my message,” in multiple places around Ahmedabad, which, to me, sums up what I'm trying to say. He was able to live a meaningful life, and his achievements flowed out of that goal. So often the outside world appears to be incompatible with whatever peace I can find internally. How can someone be truly virtuous and at the same time stand to live in a world with so much suffering? Gandhi’s Ashram was a very comforting place for me because it was the home of a man who was able to apply his ideals to his life so thoroughly.

            (Read more entries at: www.itsatravellog.blogspot.com.)

Historic Tour of Old City-Ana

Hello Bloggers!

So, today, on our seventh day in India, we went on a historic walk in the old part of the city. Similar to when one walks into China Town in NYC, the density of the people immediately quadrupled. Crossing the street involved ducking and running for your life, and walking in a straight line involved turning  sideways, and moving ones legs in a manner resembling the minister of silly walks (Monty Python). However, chaos aside, the old city was everything about India that one imagines. It started in a beautiful old temple where men and women were separated by a partition, and where the sounds of bells and Gujarati rose, and floated in the air above us. Then it led us through tiny streets from the 14th century with secret passageways that connected courtyards, and finally to a mosque (Gujarat is a muslim state), where we were met with stern stares, curiosity, and suspicion. Unsurprisingly, for a bunch of high school kids from the city, this experience was simply incredible, amazing, fantastic, superb, and any other adjective you could think of to describe something so unbelievable. So, without further ado, the picture of a (not too ecstatic to be photographed) Jain monk, exiting a smal temple...

The ice man (attacking his ice with admirable determination), who we saw in the narrow streets leading to the mosque...

And, finally, a beautiful woman (with a, might I say, incredibly subtle nose ring), in the temple at the beginning of our tour.
More to come, anxious bloggers (shout out to our 7 followers)! Love, Ana