"Love all, Serve all" 2008

The Card Project (aka Earn N' Learn)

I looked up from my sloppy handmade card to see Vijay throwing me a dimpled half-smile and diplomatically saying, “great job, Didi!” In a few minutes, I knew, he would discreetly fix my mistakes. Vijay, a ninth grader, is part of the Card Project at Manav Sadhna. Many of the project’s children find the heavy burden of being the sole income bringers for their families placed on their shoulders at the age of eight years old. Their childhood is ripped away as they are forced to drop out of school and beg for money or polish shoes to feed their families. However, as part of the Card Project, they are able go to school in the morning and come to Manav Sadhna around 1:30 in the afternoon Monday through Saturday to make handmade stationery while laughing and playing. They are paid for their work, and are also provided with a pre-approved nutritious snack. Staff members lovingly repeat lessons of hygiene, cleanliness, service, studying diligently, and respect for all religions to the children every day. Of course, not every child is as patient with my imprecise sample copying skills as Vijay—whenever I sit down to help Ashwin make his cards, he sarcastically raises his eyebrows while giving me a wide grin and charmingly convinces me to go “help” another child (so I don’t ruin his cards). Ashwin’s little sister Manisha, however, can always be counted on to give me a brilliant, beaming smile while pulling on my hand, sitting me down next to her, and giving me simple shapes to cut while she chatters away. Most of these children can crank out six or seven perfect cards in the time it takes me to make one slightly skewed card.

At Manav Sadhna, the forty or so fifth to ninth graders in the Card Project immediately swept me up into their lives and their laughter. My main project was to teach them basic English while throwing some games and dhamaal-masti into my classes. Duck duck goose, I found, was a crowd favorite for the five-second-attention-span younger children. Simon Says was a great game to play with the older children when teaching them human body vocabulary. For a few shining hours every day, I taught my classes on the back porch of Manav Sadhna. I administered tests regularly, and with the added prospect of winning prizes for getting the best grades, the children were eager to learn while making fun of my pronunciations.

In the mornings, I often accompanied staff members on other projects. One of my most memorable experiences was in going to the Civil Hospital with staff member Ajay Vaghela and a boy named Rohan to get a disability certificate. The three of us would pile into one shuttle riksha with six other people (not including the driver) to get to the hospital. Once there, we spent hours each morning running from department to department, waiting in endless lines, and collecting scraps of paper with hastily scribbled notes from doctors that would supposedly help us get the two or three signatures we needed for Rohan’s certificate. Rohan is an almost blind, deaf, and mute nine or ten year old. He is also one of the most intelligent and well-behaved children I have ever met. This orphan was found one year ago by Manav Sadhna begging on the streets, naked, with no sense of when or where to go to the bathroom, and his right arm severely infected, swollen, and pus-filled. A staff member, who lived in the slum with his family himself, took the boy into his home. Since then, Rohan was named, his arm was operated on, he was taught proper hygiene, and he had two operations on his eyes enabling him to hazily make out light and dark colors. He recognizes everyone by touching. Rohan has a hero’s style, never without a handkerchief in his pocket (which he immediately uses to wipe away any stray speck that has the misfortune of landing on his face). He makes sure to pull his pants up and take a large step over any mud or puddle in his way, and if the wind blows his carefully combed hair in the wrong direction, he grimaces and immediately sets his hair back into place. His smile lights up the world.

My experience at Manav Sadhna is unparalleled to any other occurrence in my life. I learned from the staff, side-by-side with children full of spirit, that service is only true when one does it with one’s heart, with love and the selfless desire to help another human being simply because he is another human being. Amazingly, I found the most happiness in the place where I found the most poverty. Never have I seen so many smiling faces and experienced such pure-hearted seva. I plan to go back to Manav Sadhna next summer to find more of myself by losing myself in the mass of selflessness and love that is in each and every staff member, volunteer, and child at this NGO.

Some of the children in my 8th-9th grade class

Some of the children in my 5th-7th grade class

Me and Vijay

Me and Ashwin

Me and Manisha (with Sachin and Tulsi on the side)

Prizes!

The handful--Guddi, Utsav and Mit

Hetal, Akash, Utsav, Alpesh, Manisha, Ashwin, and Me

Akash, Neelam, Alpesh, Me, Sachin

Tulsi, Akash, Meena, Me, Sachin

Ashwin, Satish, Sachin, and Vijay

A very proud Top 5 (8th-9th grade group): Vijay (2), Satish (1), Sachin (5), Ashwin (4), and Raju (3)

Me and Rohan

Rohan and Ajaybhai

The Manav Sadhna Staff

Many of them live in slums themselves, but have dedicated their lives to service. They always say they have no interest in making money. Just in being happy and spreading their love to anyone and everyone. They teach lessons of values, kindness, wholehearted service  as well as those of hygeine, health, cleanliness, and diligent studying to children every day. They patiently repeat these lessons multiple times a day, never getting bored or tired of their work. They are the purest of the pure. 

Jayeshbhai, a co-founder of Manav Sadhna.  He moved to London for a little while, but could not stand to be away from doing seva in India, so he moved back and is active in MS projects every day.

Jigneshbhai and Kiran

Me and Meena. Meena works in the Manav Sadhna kitchen, cooking food for us volunteers and staff (and any visitors) as well as the kids, Monday through Saturday.

Me and Pinaldidi. Pinaldidi works in the MS office when she is not attending classes to become a flight attendant. 

Kiran is working on graduating 11th standard (grade), but comes to MS after school to help out. 

Barotbhai and Kaushikbhai. Barotbhai himself has only gotten an education up until 9th grade, but wants other kids to get chances that he did not get as a child and further their education. He has  a family now. Kaushikbhai drives one of the MS vans, usually for Neetabehn, who visits 3-4 of the 66 Anganwadis every day.

Jagatbhai has one of the most calming presences I have experienced. The children all look up to him and always listen when he is speaking. 

Virinbhai, another co-founder of MS. His wife and children live in America, and he spends 6 months with them and 6 months with the MS family every year. 

Pinaldidi, Ajaybhai, and Shirishbhai

Me and Neetabehn. Neetabehn is an Anganwadi supervisor, and takes care of the proper functioning of each of the 66 Anganwadis. She visits a few every day. Her duties also include doing extensive paperwork to send to the government, since the Anganwadi project is the only project that also gets government funding. 

Ajaybhai,  Kaushikbhai, and Barotbhai

Ajaybhai,  Kaushikbhai, and Barotbhai

Kaushikbhai and Barotbhai

Ajaybhai,  Kaushikbhai, and Barotbhai

Ajaybhai works on the health and hygiene projects a lot, because he worked in the pharmacy in the Tekra slum as a child and has experience with medicines. He is working on getting a Master's degree in Economics now. He was a volunteer at MS for 4 years, and now has been a staff member for 3.

Bhavnabehn, Ajaybhai, and Jigneshbhai

Bhavnabehn works in the kitchen and supervises Meena.

Rakeshbhai works with the Card Project children.

They borrowed my camera to take some pictures for an Anganwadi program. When I got it back, these pictures were on it as well...

Vijaybhai works in the Mahatma Gandhi computer center at Manav Sadhna. At MS, they offer computer classes that cost 1000 Rs. for 100 Rs. 

Vijaybhai

Maheshbhai

Vijaybhai

Jigneshbhai also works in the computer center. 

Vijaybhai and Jigneshbhai (as well as Ajaybhai) are very proud of their Ultimate Frisbee championship.

Vijaybhai

Bhavnabehn and Meena in the kitchen

Me and Catalina (also a volunteer), Shirishbhai in the background

Catalina is a volunteer from Houston, Texas. She was at MS for a year--she took off a year between high school and college.

Barotbhai

Bhavnabehn, Shirishbhai, Kaushikbhai, and Ajaybhai

Me and Neetabehn

Maheshbhai, Barotbhai, Vijaybhai

Bhavnabehn, me, Kaushikbhai, Ajaybhai

Yogeshbhai, Jigneshbhai, Jagatbhai

Yogeshbhai is the Card Project supervisor--he comes up with the designs and patterns for cards that the children copy.

A Tour Inside Manav Sadhna

The place:

The Manav Sadhna building had a truly inspirational atmosphere. From the inside and outside, it looks like the safe, comfortable learning environment that it is.

The posters above are what the staff shows and explains in great detail to any visitor who comes to Manav Sadhna with questions about what the organization does. The first time I visited Manav Sadhna, Ajaybhai went through each poster explaining the projects, the mission of Manav Sadhna, and anything I had questions about. After that, I was sure this was the place I wanted to volunteer.

Inside the office/store

Inside the office/store--cards made by Card Project children on display

Arch showing places of worship of different religions

The kitchen. Huge meals are sometimes cooked in bulk for all of the children in pots the size I had never seen before.

Everyone washes his or her own dishes and utensils on the back porch after eating lunch.

View of the Sabarmati River from the back porch

Every morning at Manav Sadhna, I sat with the staff members and did a sarva dharma prathna ("all religion prayer"), followed by a meeting where us volunteers and staff members shared what was going on in our individual projects. 

Where we sat every morning for the sarva dharma prathna and meeting

The board that shows where staff members and volunteers are for the day and what projects they are working on.