Personal Connections

by Noor Christava

India has always been a big part of my life: I was born there, a lot of my family lives there, and the culture is integrated into my everyday life. I have been to India three times before, but it has always been with my family. Going on this school organized trip gave me a whole new perspective of this country and culture that is so prominent in my life. I had the opportunity to see the authentic, ordinary India that I otherwise am not exposed to. This included visiting several NGOs and being able to see first hand their impact on people and the environment. The two NGOs that I will focus on in my reflection are Butterflies and Pardada Pardadi.

Butterflies is a voluntary organization that has a non-institutional approach to helping children. They help homeless children, children in crisis, children dealing with substance abuse, children facing any other types of abuse, and children in conflict with law no matter what social class they come from. Butterflies gives the children an education, life skills, health care, and helps them with financial management. All of these, especially the financial management, helps the children take ownership over their own lives. These children’s lives often start out in pretty bad conditions, but Butterflies helps them grow and allows them to have a better future. We had the opportunity to visit the NGO in New Delhi. When we visited, we met the founder, Rita Panicker, who told us many great stories of specific children and their experiences in the school. Through these stories, I not only saw the motivation that the children have for succeeding but also the passion and motivation that the founder has. The fact that she remembered specific children and their stories showed how invested she is in Butterflies and the children they work with.

One of my favorite memories was visiting Pardada Pardadi. This is a school in Uttar Pradesh, India for girls and women from the marginalized areas of society. They not only give these girls an education but also a foundation for the rest of their lives. A big part of this foundation is to give women and girls ownership over their own lives. Similar to Butterflies, they are taught how to be financially independent. Being financially independent is an important part of navigating the world. With this education and ownership, many of the girls continue their education and go on to higher education (college). Despite the challenges, these girls are motivated to succeed. We got the opportunity to observe this motivation and passion in the girls when we visited them. We spent the majority of a day spending time with them and getting to know them. They all had a genuine curiosity about us and weren’t afraid to ask tough, personal questions. I was paired with Manshi and we got to learn about each other and share our experiences. We immediately made connections with classes we take, things we are interested in, activities we like to do outside of school, etc. These connections made me realize that despite living completely different lives, we have a lot of similarities.

I connected with both Butterflies and Pardada Pardadi on a personal level. I was born in Pune, India and my birth family couldn’t take care of me so they brought me to an orphanage. I was adopted at the age of 3 and brought to the US to live with my family. I have since then lived a considerably privileged life. In this privileged life, I, alongside many other typical children in the US, am not required to learn life skills such as financial independence in school. This vital piece of having ownership of life is a significant difference between our education and the education of the children we met in India. After I learned about both of these powerful NGOs, I felt a deeper, more personal connection. I began thinking about how my life before I was adopted was probably somewhat similar to what some of these children experience everyday. I couldn’t help but think where I would be if I hadn’t gotten adopted. Would I be in some of the situations that these children are in? This process of imagining myself in these children’s place allowed me to more deeply understand the importance and impact of these organizations. Overall, this whole experience allowed me to see a familiar place through a new perspective.