Exploring Ahmedabad

On our day off, the interns decided to explore the city of Ahmedabad a little bit more. There are so many malls in Ahmedabad! And while it can be interesting to spend time in a foreign mall, we were a bit tired of them. We wanted to see the real Ahmedabad. A new addition to the ITSA library, 101 Ways to Experience Ahmedabad, gave us some good ideas on where to go and what to do.

First, we started off at Hansiba, the SEWA Co-op Shop. The shop was named after the oldest SEWA artisan. Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is an organization based in Ahmedabad, which has helped women from surrounding districts get their wares sold. The store was filled with so many beautiful things! The pillow cases, the figurines, scarves, and clothes. It was hard to choose only a few things to buy for gifts! Sixty five percent of the profits of the store go to supporting the artists who made the artwork. We were all glad that we could positively contribute back to the artists.

Next stop was Gramshree, which we found all on our own! It was within walking distance, so we decided go for it. For those who don’t know, Ahmedabad is not a pedestrian city. Most of our transportation takes place in auto-rickshaws. Also, addresses are pretty difficult to find when you don’t know where you are going. There is no numbered system like in the States, and most addresses consist of nearby landmarks, like “near ISCON mall” and that’s it. Once you get to the landmark, you have to find the destination on your own. The address that we were trying to find was 4^th floor, Shopper’s Plaza, opposite Municipial Market, Vastrapur. But we found it, with the help of some people along the way.

Once we got there, we were pleasantly surprised again! It was a lovely store, with some really beautiful clothing. All of the profits went to Gramshee, which is a non-profit organization aiming to empower rural and slum dwelling women. , After the store, we went to a Havmur, right across the street. Most of us got to taste yet another Havmur flavor, Litchee Strawberry! We are on our way to tasting all of the flavors!  

 All in all, it was a great shopping day, with all of our money going towards good causes. 

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!