Talk is cheap but these kids don't talk all that much.
JPR and all:
Here is a wonderful article I found in Educations Times about a group of kids and their valiant efforts to better the lives of the less fortunate.
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To the aid of the motherland
Madhuri Baldwa-Bhat
Education Times - Print Edition, Mumbai
[a Times of India Publication]
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This story might sound familiar: Boy is a brilliant student, an IIT top-ranker. Goes to the USA for higher studies and gets an excellent degree. An exciting opportunity-of-a-lifetime comes along. Boy grabs it and lives happily ever after.
Balaji Sampath's story is also very similar. Well, most of it. Balaji Sampath ranked 4th in all-India IIT-JEE. After graduating with a Bachelor's in engineering from IIT Madras, he joined the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) in the United States for advanced studies in communications and signal processing. Last year, at the age of 24, he became one of the youngest Indians in the US to graduate with a PhD in less than three years. He could have accepted a lucrative opportunity in California that would eventually pay him top dollars, but declined. He was considering a more exciting option back home.
Balaji has returned to India to serve as a full-time AID volunteer joining the ranks of several Indians -- Masters' and PhD students and graduates from the US who have recently returned to India to volunteer for AID.
AID is the Association for India's Development which began seven years ago when Ravi Kuchimanchi, a graduate student at UMCP, and a few friends decided that instead of just complaining about India's huge problems, it would be more helpful if they took some small, concrete steps to make a positive difference there. So each of them contributed $10 from their own assistantship stipends, called up a few other friends who gladly donated to the cause, and took the money to the bank to set up an account. Thus, AID was born.
What started off as a $200 project at a student's apartment has today grown into more than a $100,000 per annum organisation with 20 groups that are starting chapters across North America. AID does not have any employees, only volunteers: more than 150 in the US, comprising mainly of Indian graduate students, and a few in India comprising of social workers, IIT, REC, IISc, BITS students and faculty. All the funds raised are utilised to support development projects in India. And this money is contributed largely by Indian students all over the US, most of whom are 20 to 25 years old.
When AID began in 1991, the first dilemma that faced the student-volunteers was how to use the funds in the most efficient manner. "In the beginning, we had a lot of questions about which projects to support since many of them were corrupt," says Balaji. "So we started by supporting social service groups that were recommended by friends and family -- groups we knew were honest and definitely doing good work."
Today, AID supports 25 projects in 14 states around India, reaching out to more than 15,000 people -- from Swanirwar, a healthcare revolution in West Bengal to Sparsh, AIDS-awareness camps for truck drivers in Lucknow; from Busgaon Rural Development Project in Rajasthan to Karunai Illam, an orphanage in Tamil Nadu; from the Grameen Bank in Kerala to Cloth Weaving Centre for destitute women in Assam and a candle-making cottage industry for women in Maharashtra.
In some cases the projects are initiated and inspired by AID members. In other cases, AID members suggest names of promising social service programmes they have worked with before. They also invite grant proposals though advertising. In all cases, the proposals -- ranging from $200 to $4,000 -- are reviewed with utmost care. Only after all doubts have been cleared and all questions have been answered do projects get approved.
Student volunteers monitor the progress of projects, update AID members and donors on project outcomes through their regular and interesting newsletter, Dishaa, and publish their annual report on how revenues are generated and spent. AID members and donors in the US can also acquire direct feedback by actually visiting these project sites whenever they visit India.
Balaji explains how as an Indian student from America, he got involved with AID because it gave him an equal opportunity. "We are all trying to experience different kinds of things in this world," says Balaji. "For the past twenty years I've experienced school, college, America. There is a different beauty to AID."
Shankar Manyem, 22, a doctoral candidate in chemistry at Duke University in North Carolina agrees. "It's just that problems exist and they need to be solved before they get out of hand. One reason that students don't go back to India after completing their education in the US is because they get used to the better living conditions in the US," he argues. "I feel that a lot of people will go back if the standard of living improves. After all, who wouldn't want to live in their own country."
Shankar first heard of AID last year through a fundraiser concert. He started making monthly donations to AID and reading their regular newsletters. Then, with the help of Balaji and a few others, he started an AID chapter at Duke which now has more than ten volunteers -- students pursuing higher studies in economics, business, science and engineering.
Every week, Shankar devotes around ten hours to AID activities like meetings and fundraisers. "Juggling classes, homework, research, cooking and AID does add to the pressure," he admits, "but I draw inspiration from all the other AID folk who are also managing such a work load. I like the philosophy of AID, that we are trying to tackle different problems at the same time."
AID believes that all of India's big problems -- poverty, illiteracy, unemployment et al -- are inter-linked. They plan to work simultaneously on projects in education, health care, family planning, vocational training, women's empowerment and children's welfare at the village level to bring about development. This holistic approach has spawned the idea of seed villages.
AID hopes to start its first seed village project by the end of this year and achieve 100 per cent employment, complete health care and zero population growth in the seed village.
Balaji has returned to India to participate in the development of one such seed village in Tamil Nadu. AID then hopes to use the strength and experience gained here to spread the movement radially to surrounding villages, and start four such seed villages in different regions of the country by the year 2000.
Shankar adds, "As more people realise that it is upto our generation to take charge of our affairs, development is unstoppable. It's time to recharge our batteries, to start giving back to the community we live in."
A clarification from Arvind R at AID:
'AID involves people from various walks in life. A significant part of our donors and well wishers are professional people not just students. They contribute regularly and help us out from time to time. Many of our volunteers are also professionals. In fact, our Board of Directors has as one of its members, a Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. At the other end of spectrum, one of the first fund-raisers to occur for AID was organised by two high school girls.'
For more information on AID and its activities,and how you can help in several ways, visit their website at:
cs.umass.edu, call Sudhakar/Ravi in the US at (301) 513-0565, write to them at Association for India's Development, PO Box 149, College Park, MD 20741, USA, or send them an email at aid@wam.umd.edu
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