Message from the President: Building a Better Workshop
I miss Jodhpur. I was last there on March 12, 2020, thinking I’d return soon. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Now, as travel restrictions are lifting and I contemplate when I can return, I like to imagine myself walking through the narrow lanes of Jodhpur on a Wednesday afternoon and hearing snatches of workshops coming from the windows of Sambhali Trust Empowerment Centers and Boarding Homes.
When I first volunteered at Sambhali Trust in the winter of 2019, one of the things I was responsible for was a weekly workshop for the girls at the Sheerni Boarding Home. After asking the girls what they would most like to learn about, I tried my darndest to come up with the best possible workshops.
This led to unforgettable moments like the workshop on electricity when Clara, the young volunteer from Germany, repeatedly assured me that no one would be electrocuted if we made a clock from a potato and a kit I ordered on Amazon India. Luckily, she was right. Or the PowerPoint on fashion I did with Helen, a volunteer from the UK, when I found myself having to explain to the girls why the people at the protest march all were wearing hats that looked like pink cats . . . What I remember most is how one of the girls would interrupt every so often to talk to some of the other girls. I was annoyed until I realized that she was translating what I’d said to the girls whose English wasn’t as good as hers. Then I was grateful and humbled.
I was one of a cadre of Western volunteers who put together workshops presented at boarding homes and empowerment centers. We all worked hard, sometimes developing workshops from scratch, sometimes building on the work of prior volunteers. There were many excellent workshops, but only a few of them were in Hindi. That meant that many of the women in the empowerment centers were missing out on much of what was said and, even for the more educated boarding home girls, it meant the level of presentation and discussion was far below what could have been done in Hindi.
But in large part thanks to the pandemic (hard to write that phrase in a sentence), Sambhali Trust has found a way to build a better workshop.
It begins with Indian teachers who best understand what information the women and girls already know, what they long to learn, and how to best present that information—and who can give the workshops in Hindi. English workshops offered a chance to improve English skills, which is valuable, but workshops in Hindi provide the opportunity to learn more deeply and speak more freely on sometimes very difficult topics.
Each month, Sambhali staff creates a series of Wednesday workshops to be given by tutors simultaneously at each center. In the last four months alone (the period since centers reopened after the last covid wave), workshops included a variety of topics on health and hygiene, protecting the environment, and understanding the greater world including geography, transportation, and culture.
Staff built workshops to respond to current events, such as one on preventing and treating dengue in response to a current outbreak in Jodhpur. Another workshop on the crisis for women in Afghanistan led to a demonstration of solidarity across the centers.
There have been practical workshops like the one on sewing machine repair so that when women receive a sewing machine at the end of their vocational training they will be able to avoid many costly repairs.
A workshop on martial arts complimented weekly classes in self-defense.
In addition, staff and legal interns from the Nirbhaya gender-based violence project provide supplementary workshops on topics such as sexual violence and awareness, human trafficking, and dowry. Other workshops enable women to file a police report, obtain free legal aid, and access available social services programs.
I close with just one more example. Hers is Ours, a collective from Agra, India, recently brought their traveling art and film festival to the women and girls of Sambhali. As described by Anju, one of the empowerment center tutors: “This workshop with its theater activities inspired the girls to think about why there are different rules for different genders and the ways is it fundamentally wrong and we as women need to question it.”
Check out this video—both the amazing Hindi rap and the rapt attention on the faces of the Sheerni girls.
Pretty darn obvious there is no way I could do that. But I can, and I will, support the Indian staff any way I can when I finally return to Jodhpur. I know there are many ways I can be helpful. I just won’t be leading any more workshops.
And best of all, I can join with all of you in being proud to be a part of the Sambhali family that brings that smile, that knowledge, that freedom to the women and girls in Rajasthan—a family that, in the face of a pandemic, built a better workshop.
Thank you for taking an imaginary walk with me through the lanes of Jodhpur and for all you do through your gifts of time and treasure to make that better workshop possible.
Shereen Arent
President, Sambhali U.S.