#aid india

[givology]

Thanks to your support, Eureka Superkidz, a program that teaches English, math and Tamil to underprivileged students in India, has been fully funded! We are excited to cultivate a love of learning in the students with our partner AidIndia.

[givology]

Thanks to your support, the Dreams That Could Be project successfully raised $13,489, indicating a fundraising ROI of 2.1x on our expenditures! 100% of the proceeds from the NYC gala and the book will be distributed to educational programs for our partners AidIndia & @cerclesocial.  

[uppalvikram-blog]

Use Your Skills Volunteering with Aid India

Use Your Skills Volunteering with Aid India

Aid IndiaImage: aidindia.in A committed philanthropist, Vikram Uppal draws on extensive experience as an entrepreneur and businessman. In 2002, Vikram Uppal co-founded Aid India to bring basic necessities such as food and medicine to people in India. A small non-governmental organization, Aid India relies on volunteers for its success. The organization also offers a child sponsor program and…

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[the3mangos]

[the3mangos]

Thefts, Finance, XC, and Ice Cream - by Kally

In the past couple weeks, we have witnessed a theft, made progress on our projects, and said our goodbyes to a dear friend. Xiao Chen (our beloved co-intern/friend from Malaysia/Singapore) had her wallet stolen right out of her arm bag on the bus home from work. Being the tough woman that she is, she refused to give up even after we searched her bag multiple times. Xiao Chen marched the suspected woman into the closest store to search her body. The woman, who was obviously an accomplished and successful thief, slyly dropped the wallet under a jeans rack. But Xiao Chen was not fooled, oh no! She found the wallet and ran after the woman as she tried to escape from the store. The woman hopped into an auto rickshaw but Xiao Chen called after her “Stop that woman! She stole my wallet!” and the auto driver stayed put. At this point we had amassed quite the crowd. Many kind bystanders helped us translate, called the police, and detained the woman. The woman was forced into an auto with Sally and XC, and Sonia and I followed in an auto behind them. After an eventful ride to the police station (the lady jumped out of the moving auto, ran away without her shoes, and when we finally caught up with her, she was rolling on the ground in hysterics, begging us to let her go) XC gave her statement at the police station . The police found gold jewellery and large sums of cash in the thief's bag and we were told that the thief would be put in jail for 15 days.

Last weekend, XC and I went on another village trip to Latchivakkam. Xiao Chen has been working on a financial literacy program and I went to help her with a trial run of the curriculum. I also had to test out a math curriculum for first and second standard students. The trip got off to a rocky start when four men came on the bus and beat up Suresh, the project manager. It was terrifying, watching him get hit in the head over and over again and not being able to understanding what was going on at all. It turns out that there’s some bad blood between the aggressors and Suresh. Suresh was okay and the incident didn’t stop him from working all day as our translator and project facilitator. What a champ.

We spent the night at Suresh’s house with his absolutely wonderful family. They treated us with immense kindness, inviting us to act as if we were in our homes. Yet again, we feasted like queens on fish, chicken, rice, sambar, chutneys, omelets, and pineapple. Heaven. In the morning we drank coffee (ie. Sweet cream with a coffee favour) as we sat outside by the green sea of rice fields eating coconut and mango and getting our hair braided by Suresh’s sister. I think we both would have like to extend our stay but we had a full day ahead of us in Latchivakkam finishing up our projects. Our bus ride home (or should I say our six bus rides home) were much calmer. We returned tired, filthy, dehydrated but safe.

Much to our dismay, Xiao Chen returned to Malaysia on Monday. We’ve all grown so attached to this crazy and energetic girl - it’s so quiet here without her! On her last night we went to the Copper Chimney (a posh North Indian restaurant) with her roommate Shalini where we ate salivating dishes of fish, lamb, paneer (cottage cheese) and beans accompanied by warm and buttery garlic naan bread and mango lassies. Gluttony at it’s best. It is safe to say that we all had difficulty being even remotely mobile after such an exquisite feast. Speaking of gluttony and feasting, we have discovered the best ice cream shop on earth. As a Bowser, I feel that it would be a sin to leave something as life-altering as the opening of “Fudge and Cream” out of our blog. This ice cream shop, which has the same idea as a Cold Stone, allows you pick your ice cream flavors and add in toppings. It’s mixed together and placed in a fresh waffle cone or bowl. My mouth aches just thinking about it. It’s going to be difficult not to become a regular.

At the end of next week, the three of us are taking a mini-vacation and heading to Mumbai and Goa from July 1st – July 10th. We're pretty excited for the glitz and glamour of Mumbai, lounging on the beach, maybe a few dips in the Arabian Ocean, and tasting the Portuguese flavours of Goa.

[the3mangos]

[the3mangos]

Surveys with Sally

During the last two weeks, there has been a lot of progress with the health projects that I have been working on. My main project, the 24 hour dietary recall surveys with rural mothers, is now underway and after a few test trials, many of the initial kinks have been worked out. My survey has been translated into Tamil so that Viji can interview the mothers on her field visits and we are gathering lots of information on the dietary patterns of rural children aged 5-13. This dietary survey has been a rewarding learning experience for me and gave me a wonderful opportunity to understand the many difficulties, frustrations, and rewards that comes with creating and implementing a survey.

Earlier this week, I proposed a Health Education and Awareness Project to Prabha and Balaji (founder of the Chennai branch of AID India) where - along with help from Sonia and Kally - I would create a basic health curriculum. This health curriculum can be implemented simultaneously with the existing Eureka Child Educational Initiative (www.eurekachild.org) in the villages through educational posters, pamphlets, books, and games on various health topics. This would be a big step for expanding AID India's health program to educate young children about health awareness while building on the existing framework of the educational program. It would also give the three of us a side-project to work on when work for our main projects are slow, and we can finish our internship by presenting AID India with the seeds of a health curriculum. The scope of this project is quite large and much needs to be done before it can be fully implemented. But I believe that we can contribute significantly by laying the foundations for this curriculum so that future interns – from McGill and elsewhere – who are interested in health issues can continue to build and improve on what we leave behind. Some of the topics that we have started gathering materials for include basic health facts, anaemia awareness, sexual health education, nutrition, basic first aid, and reproductive health for adolescent girls.

This week, Angel – who completed her masters degree at the Madras School of Social Work - joined AID India's health project team and will also be working on improving and expanding AID India's burgeoning health projects. She speaks both Tamil and English fluently and I will be accompanying her on village visits and working together with her and Viji to implement the dietary surveys. She has extensive experience working for child health NGOs and hospitals. It's been so wonderful to work with her since she is both professional and personable. On the long train rides to and from rural villages, the hours fly by as we share our thoughts on various issues – health, education, female infanticide, the Indian caste system, etc. I have also discussed the Health Education and Awareness Project with Angel and she is enthusiastic about the long-term potentials of the project. We hope to keep in contact after the end of my internship so that I can work on the Project when I'm back in Canada. I plan to talk to the Arts Internship Office at McGill about recruiting more students interested in health related issues to intern at AID India in the future. The health program is still in its early stages and can really benefit from having more health interns - with more knowledge and skills on health issues than I - to expand, organize, and improve the programs.

I think this is some pretty exciting stuff and we've really got our work cut out for us for the remainder of our internship! I can hardly believe we only have 5 more weeks in our internship before we go our separate ways – Sonia to Nepal and Mount Everest with her dad, Kally to her floor-fellowing gig at McGill, and I will be meeting up with my friend Laura in Delhi to embark on a whirl-wind tour of North India.

[the3mangos]