We can’t all visit, but the sense of knowing we are a part of the family is an important part of Sambhali. And from those who can be there, whether as a traveler in the case of Usha Ravi or as a volunteer providing technical support as Ellie Hamburger is doing, hearing first-hand accounts about the impact of Sambhali’s programs is a powerful way to understand how the Sambhali family functions.

Also in this newsletter, Harini Varadarajan’s article, The Jaisalmer Empowerment and Primary Education Centers: A Sambhali Story of Trials and Triumphs, based on an interview Ellie did when she visited, explains the challenges of building a new branch of the family from the trunk of a very strong tree.

What Carlea Bauman’s article on the new Nirbhaya Home, New Shelter Underway to Support Survivors of Gender-Based Violence, tells us about this family is that it is loving and accepting. The women and girls in Sambhali’s programs, as well as the staff, were for the most part raised in deeply traditional families that did not approve of sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage or gender identities beyond the one assigned at birth. And yet when Sambhali began its programs with the LGBTQ+ community six years ago, they joined a family that embraced its new members with joy. Every woman and girl in Sambhali’s programs, every staff member, knows what it’s like to be treated unfairly because of gender, caste, class, religion or a combination and they do not want anyone else to face discrimination or condemnation. And from this loving family Nirbhaya Home—serving women and members of the LGBTQ+ community needing a safe space as well as women and children yearning for education—becomes a reality.

One of the things great families do is to nurture members to grow and become nurturers and leaders themselves. And here Sambhali is extraordinary.

A healthy organization hires talented people with dedication to the mission and thus is often able to promote from within. At Sambhali, there are many examples of this, such as Rajshree Rathore, who began as a tutor at the Sheerni Boarding Home and is now Sambhali’s Head of Educational Services and Local Volunteers Coordinator, Vimlesh Solanki who began as a teacher and is now the Office Manager in Jodhpur where her tasks include supervising the self-help (microfinance) groups and running the programs in Jodhpur schools, and Arunima Soni who began as a volunteer in Jodhpur before moving to Jaisalmer to help open and manage the program there.

And Sambhali Trust goes a step further, hiring many of those who began as students. To me, nothing says an organization believes in itself as much as hiring its former students.

Currently in the four Jodhpur Empowerment Centers and Primary Education Centers two of the lead academic teachers and three of the sewing teachers began as students. In Setrawa, two of the three staff members began as students. Monica Jod, one of the very first Empowerment Center students, runs the program to connect current students with government social services programs and to markets for the products they sew. These staff members come from the communities they serve. They understand their students’ needs and the obstacles they face every day as they seek to find and raise their own voices.

Anju Sharma began as a student at the Laadli Empowerment Center in Jodhpur. Although she had completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she came to learn sewing skills to help provide income for her family. At the end of the year of training, she applied for a job as an academic teacher and has been working at Sambhali Empowerment Centers for the last seven years, currently having come full circle to be the lead teacher at the Laadli Empowerment Center. Her day is long. She gets up at 6:00 am to do her household chores before coming to the center and finishes each day around 10:30 pm with at most an hour's break, but she does so with joy. Anju explains:

Then there are three special teachers who started with Sambhali when they were little girls in the Peacock class at the Primary Education Center in Setrawa. Manisha Sain, Lalita Khatri, and Samta Sharma joined Sambhali when they were just six and seven years old. In 2012, Manisha and Lalita were among the first girls to start the Sheerni Boarding Home in Jodhpur. A dozen years later, Manisha just finished her first year of graduate school where she is studying geography on the path to becoming a teacher. For the last two years, she has been teaching math and English at Sambhali Primary Education Centers in the afternoon. When I met Lalita five years ago, she didn’t know how to turn on a computer, but she had an innate ability as we worked together to try to fix a connection problem with the one computer that had recently been installed at the Sheerni Boarding Home. Today, as she finishes her B.Sc. in Chemistry, Botany and Zoology, she is also a Sambhali computer teacher working in both boarding homes and Primary Education Centers. Samta stayed in the village, but with a Sambhali scholarship she was able to go to a private school and from there finish her bachelor’s degree, a teaching degree, and is currently finishing a master’s degree in history. She is now an academic and a sewing teacher at Sambhali’s Empowerment Center and Primary Education Center in Setrawa.

Manisha Sain

Lalita Khatri

Samta Sharma

Sambhali is a family that believes in the promise of the people it serves, one that embraces all of its diverse members with joy—even those of us so far away geographically, but close in spirit.

Thank you for being in this family, for embracing it in all its beautiful parts, for telling the stories of Sambhali to others, and for your donations of time and treasure.

With gratitude,

Shereen Arent
President
Sambhali U.S.