A long overdue post!

View from the room we stayed at in the village

A wild monkey about to pounce on someone

Being smuggled in a truck to the village

A woman's house in the village

Part of a family that lived together in the village

School at the village

National Games Village- the apartments where some of the USAC students live- it reminds me of the Gotham at the beginning of the Batman ride at Magic Mountain

First Mango Lassi of my trip at Terrace Restaurant

With some of the women from the Self Help Group Federation and some other students

All of us and our henna!

All henna-ed!

Me and my henna!

I love social work, everyday I am here I am further validated that this is what I want to do with my life. As Westerners I feel that we often believe our way of doing things is the best way and seeing NGOs in action it is plain to see that there is an approach to social work in every country that works.
The social work department on the Christ University campus is amazing proactive. The MSW program has created the Center for Social Action about ten years ago and it has already benefitted so many marginalized people in Bangalore and the surrounding villages. They have helped children living in slums attend school and go on to college which is such a huge accomplishment. They are also starting a project to make Christ University a "waste free" campus by 2011. They have set up "wet" and "dry" bins for food waste and everything else so that they can find a way to reuse or recycle everything instead of things going to landfills. This is an amazing endeavor in India where I have seen people emptying trash cans in the street. The CSA also has a program where every student at Christ University is required to go on an overnight trip to a village. People who are able to go to college are generally wealthy, from higher castes and have never been exposed to village living. Once students have been exposed to the slums and to the villages they generally continue to volunteer and donate money so that the CSA programs can continue. The other program that I was exposed to this week was Karnataka Regional Organization for Social Services (KROSS) and it is a Catholic run organization similar to CSA that goes into villages to start self help groups for women etc.
In so many of my social work classes we speak of empowerment, we don't "help" our clients and we don't "empower" our clients we give them the tools to achieve empowerment on their own. I can listen to the lectures and the words til my professors are blue in the face but this last weekend and this past week I have visited two villages and been able to witness the power of giving the tools for empowerment first hand. We visited a micro-finance self help group and a self help group federation. It was amazing to see the women in these groups who have shifted the power structure of villages. When these two organizations first went to the villages they work in the women were "treated like animals" they were not allowed to socialize, let alone go out of the house (you should see their reaction when they find out I am married and my husband is in California!). When the self help groups first started the women were afraid to walk to the meetings. With the tools given from these organizations the women have gained confidence and now as one woman said they, "realize how powerless men are." The women are given the tools to start micro-financing groups and have saved an amazing amount of money so far. These micro-financing groups are so empowering and such a great tool for the village because they save money and are able to give low-interest loans to women in the self-help group for things such as sending children to school, buying a cow for milk to sell, buying chickens, etc. Otherwise the village members would have to go to outside sources with high interest rates which do not come back to benefit the group. In this way the village can become self sustained and not have to rely on wealthy land lords who take advantage of them. The women in the second self-help group that we attended were so amazing and so forward thinking it is amazing to see how far things have come and to think about how far they can take things. The collective voice of the women has the power to change policies and close liquor stores which lead to high alcoholism rates and domestic violence in the village. We were discussing in class how in America you would see a woman leave her husband for drinking and abuse but these women change the situations and close liquor stores and save the marriages. This divergence in thinking is an amazing form of indigenization of social work and social issues. It shows how to be culturally competent it is imperative to take an ethnographic approach in understanding what is important and what is valued in clients lives and work in that direction instead of taking charge and changing things the way we believe is "best."

Ok, ok, I know not all of you are interested in social work but our village trip was amazing (despite our flat tire/broken axl delaying us for three hours on the side of the road). I started dance lessons this week and we are supposed to do a performance before we leave. I really suck since Adventism has bred the rhythm out of me but it is so much fun! Today we had our henna party and it was so much fun, the women were amazing artists. It reminded me so much of high school and all the henna we used to do and it was so cool to be able to participate in this in India!

This weekend we are staying in Bangalore and sight seeing here and going souvenir shopping. Plus, we are going to eat an American breakfast buffet at Bocca Grande, yummm. I was on facebook briefly today but probably not again until I go home. I hope everyone is having as amazing a summer as I am!