The good life side of Indore

Just so you don’t think I’ve spent all my time in the slums ….  

This is Daly College, a residential school for well-to-do kids. We visited this campus because it is a model of optimal water management.  It is an oasis of green. Just beautiful.
Grey water is reused, there is a water treatment plant on campus, they practice rainwater harvesting and bore well recharging; and property within 100 yards of the campus experience high water levels in their wells due to the recharging at Daly.  
And, there is not a speck of trash on the campus. The students were realy nice. We conducted an interactive exercise and a survey on water scarcity awareness.

At the Shishukunj International School, we met with the students in the Green Club. We are happy to report that they were an environmentlly savvy bunch.

Classes are held on Saturday in India. That is, for the kids that go to school. On our several visits to the slums kids never seemed to be in school even on week days.

This is a modern campus in a new area of Indore near the city limits where new housing communities for a growing middle class are on the rise here, along with a big box store and a giant mall, of course.

Smiles are optional

 

Smiling for the photo is natural for us Westerners.

Not so here. It is not a reflection of unhappiness. The people are happy to meet you and invite you to take their pictures but they don’t automatically smile.

It’s just one of this cultural differences I’ve noted and thought I would share. Namaste, Maria

Dress code: Women at work

 

 

 

In India, you will see a flood of colorful saris everywhere you go. Women at work, even the ones on construction sites, wear saris. It’s lovely.

These ladies are on break from cleaning at this new club that’s being built in a posh new development.

This was at another community meeting. The women seated on the floor are beautifully dressed; they come from one of the slums. I often feel under dressed.

India and my fifteen minutes of fame

I haven’t blogged lately as we have been consumed with a different kind of craziness. A film crew descended on Indore to document our work for the IBM CSC.

This required another visit to the Rahul Ghandi nagar community where we met again with the woman I call the water goddess. So, while we were sweating bullets in the blazing hot sun the crew was filming us. I can’t wait to see the footage. If this doesn’t send me to the fat farm I don’t know what will. We were popular the first time and now that we returned with a film crew, the kids, the adults and even the cows think we are celebrities. We were swarmed and I had a great time.

It was very sad leaving the slum knowing that I will never see these sweet people again. I was moved to tears.

Then, today we had a press conference with several publications. The topic was the IBM CSC. The team of twelve were there along with two of the NGO’s, from Urban Health Resources and Concept Society, both organizations are working on different aspects of woman empowerment. While there I was interviewed by the Hindustan Times. Picture and all will make the Sunday paper. Oh boy; looks like I had to come all the way to India for my fifteen minutes of fame. Good night and Namaste.

Tagged: #ibmcsc india

Dedicated to teachers everywhere in the world

This is Namita Goel. She is part of the India@75 team that we work with. Before India@75, she worked for Teach for India where she had 87 students in her class.  She is a great contributor to our project, very creative. She has a lot of patience and a really big heart. 

This post is dedicated to my sister, Margaret Jean, and to teachers everywhere. MJ is a lifelong educator who had as many as 48 Catholic school students in her classes in NYC in the 1970’s. 

Check out the video Namita did at Teach for India. Design for Change MHB Municipal School 

Tagged: #ibmcsc india

After a weekend in Bhopal, we dive deep into our projects

The India17 volunteers went to Bhopal for a visit to several World Heritage Sites: Sanchi, Udaygiri Caves and the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetra.

My colleagues have done a better job than I documenting the journey so, check out their Blogs if you have further interest.

We are now into our second week in Indore. The India@75 team, Zack, Maco and me, have a few more field visits to make. We are still back and forth finalizing elements of the plan with the clients. But, we are mostly heads down on developing the framework for our project regarding urbanization and addressing Indore water scarcity. Then, with a little more than two weeks left, we’ll have about seven days to complete the elements of the project before we begin the dry run and final presentation in the last week. Not too much pressure, eh?

It is amazing how we all get along really well. Our entire team has become a tightly knit community. Thanks to IBM, individuals from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Japan, Mexico and the USA have been brought together to do good.

Everyone in CSC has said this is a life changing experience, that’s true for us already. More importantly, we hope the lives we change will be the ones we touch in India.

Namaste, Maria