Final Thank You from Raj

Mike and Kevin, as I am sitting on an airplane trying to get some sleep, a few thoughts came to mind...

In what is always a sad time for me, I now realize sitting on an airplane that I will not see for some time -- or ever -- the eyes of those children.

Nothing breaks my heart more then the child I handed candy to at Little Hearts. That child was so helpless, and the image I have engrained in my head shall forever serve a reminder of what duty, humanity, and compassion calls from me. That image and many others from the past 2 weeks haunt me with guilt, but at the same time inspires me to do something more.

I wish we could have brought them all home with us.

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To that end,

I just wanted to thank you both for your help this past 2 weeks. Your energy, drive, and passion as Rotarians and my friends was truly awesome and invaluable.

Words cannot express how grateful I am to be an American, an Indian, and a Rotarian today. It is because of you gentlemen that I am proud to be all three.

I consider myself privileged to have served along side with you in what we did these past two weeks. Many of these children saw from you hope, compassion, and dedication that I can only pray will give them the motivation to survive the insurmountable odds in their futures.

I hope through all the communication we have done this project can become as important as our Bryan's house efforts have been but on the international front. As you know, there is much to do and much more help needed. I say that whether we look to help in India, Mexico, S. America, or other places in Africa and Asia.

To that end I hope we can dedicate others to the cause as well in the coming year.

It only takes 1 person, 1 passion, 1 vision, and hard work to get things going... You both did that with no reservation over the past 2 weeks.

My sincerest thanks to you as your friend, colleague, and fellow Rotarian. I hope your lives are as changed and touched as mine is today.

Raj Narayanan

Leaving Chennai

Today we leave Chennai. We leave behind the bright smiling faces of hundreds of children who have touched our lives so deeply. We leave behind new friends. We leave behind men and women filled with compassion to help children who have been brought into this world only to be cast aside.

We also leave behind a small mountain of supplies for these children. We've distributed:
- personal hygiene kits (toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, combs, shampoo, fingernail clippers, talcum powder, etc) for 700 children
- 700 bed mats
- school supplies (pens, study books, crayons, coloring books, erasers, pencils, chalk) for 700 children
- basic first aid supplies (guaze, band aides, iodine, etc) for 500 children
- medicines to meet the specific special needs of many disabled children
- food (rice and lentils for 200 children for one month, and milk supplied for 100 children for two months)
- pots & pans and other cooking equipment for several different orphanages
- basic light fixtures to allow study after dark for one orphanage
- soccer balls, cricket bats & balls, and badminton rackets and shuttlecocks

We leave with a renewed sense of hope in the ability of love and compassion to triumph over the worst of this world’s trials. We leave with a renewed sense of purpose, dedicating ourselves to helping those in need. We leave with memories, poignant, beautiful, and tragic. We leave with a sense of mission accomplished.

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We have finalized our accounting of the funds used. Feel free to review the final trip report here.

Each of the three of us wanted to say thank you to everyone we've worked with here in India. The volunteers who work at these orphanages and schools are nothing short of miracle workers, and we salute you. And to all our friends and supporters at home who have given money and moral support, we give you a hearty thanks as well. We could not have done this without your support.

Now, nothing remains but the ride to the airport and the flights back home. Shakespeare poetically describes parting as such sweet sorrow. And leaving these orphans fills me with a swirl of emotions. But now that I'm staring 28 hours of air travel in the face, I can't rise to Shakespeare's eloquence. I'm looking forward to this about as much as a kick in the teeth.

Mike Morath

A Few Words from Raj

It has been about 9 days since I arrived in India, give or take a time zone or two, and this has been my first moment to write a few words about my experience thus far. We all have been very busy... Trying to get organized, supplies procured and visits arranged has been a challenge, but one that we all have worked through very well.

First, my hats off to Mike and Kevin for being so dedicated to our team effort. Initially, I was worried that taking two Americans to India and getting involved would have been a difficult challenge to overcome. Not because of the lack of desire but mainly because of the culture shock.

Overall, they both could not have done finer... Well, ok.. 10 days in to the trip and Mike is craving a Big Mac with Large fries and Kevin a steak. And I admit, I miss my Starbucks Venti Americano...

Overall the experience with all the facilities we have visited has been truly unique. We visited 6 facilities and committed in kind goods to 4 so far. We were also able to help a couple of small orphanages near to my parents residence on the coast in Chennai. These two smaller facilities service the local villages by providing housing, education, and medical treatment for significantly disabled orphaned children. In fact, many of these children were simply abandoned, which is sad to say.

I don't think my words can express how hard it's been on me to see these kids with disabilities. My first thought seeing these kids that could not fend for themselves, walk, or even eat was of great sadness. I could not believe that these kids existed with no hope and or potential way to obtain an improved quality of life. With that in mind we started our mission 10 days ago. Getting the right supplies including medical supplies, food, basic hygiene items, and educational supplies was on my mind as the core mission.

What is my hope? Perhaps with some well needed food or medicine 1 child can become healthy, have a sliver of hope, and in the end 1 child's quality of life has been improved.

To that end, I believe as we start to wrap up our effort in the next few days we have been successfully. As we deliver supplies and goods, we see smiles, hope, and heart. It's all that you need....

Most important, in the last 2 days I've seen smiles on children that are worth a million bucks... Handing out sweets and chocolates to several hundred kids -- able bodied and disabled alike -- they all smile.

We will continue in the next few days and provide a closing blog report soon.

Raj Narayanan

Samajam

It is perhaps one of the greatest aspects of the divine plan that you can receive so much pleasure from doing good deeds.

We paid a visit to Samajam today, to ensure some lights we had purchased for that orphanage's rather dilapidated dining room / main hall were installed properly. We also wanted to get a few more details on the setup for their new clean water system.

The kids were so happy to see us, we decided to stick around. So once the business of our visit was done, we just ran around like big goof balls. These pics/videos pretty much tell the story.

Click for video Children have access to water at Samajam now, but at risk of disease

Click for video The nuances of cricket were pretty well lost on me

Click for video Even with meager facilities, the kids' spirits are high

Parrys Corner

It takes some getting used to the Indian version of commerce. You don’t just walk down to a Home Depot and pick up goods and check out in an orderly fashion. It's a full day extravaganza.

Click for Video of Market

Chennai’s wholesale district is called Parrys Corner. It spans a few city blocks, and slams together a huge number of vendors selling all manor of goods produced locally. It’s a disorganized mass of humanity and vehicles and goods, all going in a thousand different directions at once.

So many cars, trucks, buses, and motorcycles pass thru the district – none with catalytic converters – that staying there for any length of time is painful. We were there for several hours, and it felt like I had a two stroke lawnmower engine shoved into my mouth the whole time. The fumes were horrendous – so bad that we all ended the day with soar throats. I don’t know how the shopkeepers live past 45, as it seems like they’d all come down with black lung.

Parking and loading brings its own inconveniences and (for those of us with a bit of perspective) amusement. On our initial approach to the market, we were driving slowly in search of parking – creeping in starts and stops. All of the sudden a tow truck pulls up in front of us. Someone jumps off the back and immediately puts a boot on our car. Having lived in Washington DC for a few years while I was in college, I was quite familiar with getting a boot on my car. But I’ve never been in a moving car, in traffic, and been stopped to have a boot placed on it. 30 minutes and a 150 Rupees later (almost $4), we’re back in search of a parking spot, this time noticing all the other vehicles with boots (including several vans from Mother Theresa’s orphanages). I thought that was the high point, until the same thing happened about 5 hours later as we were loading bed mats in front of another shop. This time, the shopkeeper paid the fee.

Dollars can be stretched quite a long way in India, but you’ve got to be prepared to make a serious time commitment to get anything done.



Mike Morath

A Day of Thanks

In America today, we would be celebrating Thanksgiving. A day when we take a breather from the hussle of our daily lives, and give thanks for all our blessings. India has many wealthy citizens, newly rich in India's booming econonmy, with many obvious things to be thankful for. But millions remain untouched by this econimic revolution, mired in abject poverty. I thank God that I've had the ability to take this two week breather from my otherwise typical working life in Dallas, to count my many blessings... and even to reaffirm my faith in humanity. For you don’t have to look too long in India for proof that the human spirit burns with compassion.

Today we visited an organization that takes care of orphaned children infected with HIV/AIDS. The stigma of HIV/AIDS looms large here, where infection rates are growing rapidly. Children who are abandoned and suffer from HIV/AIDS are shunned, even in existing orphanages. So this organization receives referrals from all over the country. They also operate several HIV/AIDS clinics and conduct a large amount of community outreach to help those infected and prevent others from getting infected. HIV/AIDS is a large and growing problem in India: their epidemiological studies in just one area of the city show over 100,000 cases. This organization was actively supported by the local TamilNadu (state) government, the American India Foundation, and US AID, but even with that support, their primary orphanage location cares for 41 children ranging in age from infants to 18 years in less than 4,000 square feet of space. They make amazing things happen with very little.

We also visited a school operated for children with learning disabilities. This school was absolutely amazing. The executive director was a former professor of Special Education in the states, with a PhD from Rutgers. She founded and expanded the school to cover three separate facilities, and offers the highest quality education for children with special needs that I’ve ever seen – including any facilities in the States. The curriculum is tailored to the needs of each child, traditional classroom educational mixed with vocational training in areas as wide as typing to screen printing to cooking. What she has accomplished, with only a fraction of the resources truly required for such an impressive operation, is nothing short of miraculous. The school is highly sought after in the community – fees are collected from a few wealthy families, and those are used to subsidize the education of the rest of the students (roughly 2/3rds of the students don’t pay any tuition). The local state government also recognizes the value of their educational services: the TamilNadu state government uses the school’s teachers to go outside the city limits to rural (and extremely poor) areas in the state to offer training and teaching services to India’s rural poor. There they work with families that have little to none of the basic necessities of life: no four walls, no hygiene products, irregular food supplies, many with families that lack any education or even literacy. The school’s work in the rural areas covers over 2600 children that would otherwise not receive any education whatsoever. But even this extremely well run operation is desperately short of supplies.

We are here to try, however meager our efforts might be, to help address that problem. We’ve gotten lists from each facility we’ve visited, ranging from pots and pans to light bulbs to toothpaste to sheets to basic medicines. One agency director said she could use anything from matchsticks to a million dollars. One orphanage teacher said she made very little money doing this work, and cared very little about the money she did make, but wanted anything we could supply to help the children – requesting things such as learning aids and a rice cooker.

Tomorrow we start our procurement efforts in earnest.

Mike Morath

Chennai Orphanages

Today we got our first taste of life in Chennai.

The city itself is huge. The geographic area of the city of Chennai is maybe only half the size of the city of Dallas proper, but there are about 8 million residents.
Touring different parts of the city requires a bit of planning, since a visit to a location in a far away part of the city can take 4 hours or more in light traffic. And the roads in Chennai (and Delhi) are not exactly built for the smooth flow of traffic. Barriers in the road are set up randomly, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly traversable street, for the sole purpose of slowing traffic. And some of the “vehicles” on the road aren’t exactly speedy: cars and motorcycles share the road with carriages drawn by water buffalo and camels, and you can’t go half a mile without seeing a few sacred cows. Many streets have no lane markings, and those that do have lanes might as well not have any. Drivers in India look at all forms of traffic signs (including stop lights) more as best practice recommendations than actual laws to follow. I’m convinced that the drivers of India could be placed in the highest pressure environments in the world and never flinch, because they are absolute masters of the game of chicken.

The most immediately observable difference between Chennai and Delhi is air quality. The air here is bad but breathable, comparable to a heavily polluted US city on a high ozone alert day. But Chennai is still filled with all the contradictions of rich and poor that we found in Delhi.

We visited four orphanages today.

The first, Samajam, was a traditional orphanage caring for street children and offering schooling for the children in care (who range in age from 5 to 16). They have 100 children in care, and their facility is big enough to hold more, but they can’t take any more children as they don’t have enough ongoing funds for food and salaries. Our rotary partner in Chennai, the Madras Rotary, has initiated a matching grant project with our rotary club in Addison to install a clean water pumping facility for these children to help prevent water-borne illnesses. Some of the supplies for this project have been donated, and are already on-site (pictured here). The children that are here are extremely excited to be here, as they would otherwise have to beg for food on the streets, would not have any clean clothes or bathing facilities, and would not be getting any education. Children show up regularly to see if there are open spaces, and the word of mouth on the street (from one child to another in the streets of the slums) easily fills any spots that are available.

Each of the remaining three facilities we visited were orphanages for mentally handicapped children. These children, long since abandoned, are referred by hospitals or concerned citizens, and these orphanages are perhaps the only way these children can experience any quality of life. Many of the children are trained to do handicrafts or other basic vocations. The first of these orphanages, Little Hearts, also operated an elementary school for children from very poor families, and integrated some of the high functioning handicapped orphans in their care into that school in preparation to receive a complete primary education. That school was phenomenal – caring teachers and attentive students. They even offered physical education classes to the children. While we visited, an instructor was conducting a Kung Fu lesson, so I tried to keep up with the kids in that class as best as I could. My inability to keep up made me glad I wasn’t on “Are you smarter than a fifth grader.”

Click for Kung Fu Video

Each of these facilities does nothing short of God’s work, every day. It’s amazing to see, and it was an emotionally draining day to say the least.

Mike Morath