UC Davis Blum Center for Developing Economies

Fig 1: Hygiene Day excitement at READ school I would lay in bed until the birds began to chirp and the sun began to shine through my window. Although this sounds like a storybook sentence, I indeed woke up to this every morning in the village. And mind you, the goats bleating and the dogs barking indeed compose a rhythm, far better than those classic alert sounds on your iPhone. Fig 2: Income Generation - Handmade cards for women employment For the most part, we had power cuts towards late night, due to which the motor wouldn’t run all night, and hence the water tank would never fill up. As a result, there was no water to bathe or brush with. We would drink Filter Coffee before getting ready for the day. Traditional south Indian food with some aromatic spices and freshly taken out coconut water would greet us at our dining table. We would quietly overeat every day and pack our bag with notepads, laptops in case we had to show videos, game materials, internet modem for our data never wo...

Fig 1: Menstruation Education for girls of Grades 4 and 5 Working or doing social service in a community that is new to you, is an entirely different experience from a study abroad program. Yes, both expose you to new cultures and give you a platform to evaluate your choices and live your life better. I say this because studying in the US for the past year has taught me a lot. Be it, regarding how the culture is so different from Dubai, where I grew up, or by showing me about different tastes and hobbies. However, as a north Indian, traveling to South India for the first time in my life, I realized very early in our trip that language was not the only barrier I was going to face. Fig 2: Computer Programming class for teachers I speak 5 languages - Hindi, Punjabi, English, Urdu, and basic Arabic. None of these were going to help me converse with the school students or the elderly members of the HIV+ community that I was going to be working with so closely. As a north...

Fig 1: RISHI Team with teachers and Headmistress at READ school I am part of a non-profit on campus called Project RISHI, and this year I was fortunate enough to receive funds from the BLUM Center for Developing Economies to go out into the field and live with the community that I was out to work with. Every interaction I had with the community leaders to the small children in the village, has gained a particular spot in my memories and I hope to go back very soon to further strengthen the connections I was able to make in the last month. When we arrived at the guesthouse in Andimadam (a village in the South Indian of Tamil Nadu), we were greeted by several smiling faces, we couldn’t recognize. Over the days, we were given the opportunity to know these community leaders who were taking out time from their busy schedules to welcome us, live with this and make us feel at home. Indeed, when we had been in conversation with the primary correspondent and head of Rural Education and Action D...