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