Changing the Plan

I am writing this message from Jodhpur, India on November 3rd where I began the day watching the Phillies in the World Series (the game started here at 5:30 a.m.). I plan to spend the morning with the college students at the Abhayasthali Boarding home then have lunch with Monica Jod, the Sambhali Trust staff member who works to ensure the women at the Empowerment Centers have access to government social service programs and who secures market work so the women can earn money for sewing even as they learn. In the afternoon, I will attend the presentation of an outside evaluator who has reviewed the first five years of the Laadli Boarding Home for PADEM, a Sambhali Trust funder based in Luxembourg. After that, I’ll travel to one of the Primary Education Centers to see the children in their afterschool program. Then I’ll bring in dinner for a friend who has covid and is isolating in her room.

One thing I know for certain is the plan will change. The other thing is that I will be enriched by the experiences I have instead.

And as plans changes and evolve, so have I. It was only after coming to India that I learned not to be frustrated by each change, but rather to understand, sometimes with sadness, but often with joy, each new direction. 

Two days ago, I visited the Laadli Empowerment Center and Primary Education Center. There I again met Asha, a teacher I have admired for years. And I again met Anita. In this neighborhood, where many girls get almost no formal education, Anita had finished 11th grade when the pandemic hit. When schools finally reopened after nearly two years, her father wouldn’t let her go back to finish her last year, but allowed her to attend the Laadli Empowerment Center to learn to sew. Sambhali Trust staff was working to try to change her father’s mind so that she could finish school. That was the plan last spring. 

Asha and Anita at Laadli Empowerment Center

When I returned seven months later, Anita had not gone back to school, but this time it was her decision. She felt she had been away from school for so long that it would be too hard to catch up and pass the board tests necessary for graduation. Instead, she wanted to focus on being able to earn a living through her sewing. What about her family? When the Laadli Center needed to move from its prior building, her family offered the entry room in their small home as the new location. They believe in what Sambhali is doing to prepare their daughter, to strengthen her, and they wanted the Center to continue to reach women and children in their neighborhood. Asha told me how all the women and their families came together to move the Center. As a community, they carried sewing machines and desks and cloth and notebooks for 500 meters down narrow lanes to Laadli Center’s new location at Anita’s house.

Yesterday, I visited the Fatima Empowerment Center and Primary Education Center accompanied by Manisha. 

What was the plan for Manisha when she was born? Probably much like her two older sisters who finished 10th grade, married at 18, and began having children a year later—the nieces and nephews Manisha adores. 

The plan changed over a decade ago when Manisha became one of the first girls at the Sheerni Boarding Home. She is now completing her BA while living at the Abhayasthali Boarding Home. She has also successfully completed courses in computer science and accounting and wants to work in a bank when she graduates. 

Young Manisha learning

Since June, Manisha has also been a teacher at Sambhali Trust’s Fatima Primary Education Center and I was honored to watch her in action—to see the joy in her students’ faces when they greeted her, to hear them call her “Manisha Ma’am”, to see how superbly she did her job with a powerful combination of ability, confidence, and caring.

Manisha told me about a young girl who came to the Center last spring unable to even hold a pencil and how she has learned the Hindi and English alphabets and now knows how to write. Manisha told me how proud she is of her student and also how proud she is to be a teacher. I was working hard to hold back tears when she said, yes, it was okay for me to also feel proud of her, because I am also family.

A change of plans. It doesn’t mean there aren’t still many obstacles, but as I sit here on a 95° cloudless day, Manisha’s future looks as strong and bright as the sun.

So what did I actually do on November 3rd? I spent time at the Abhaysthali boarding home as planned, hanging out and doing interviews of Manisha and the five young women who graduated from secondary school last spring while living at the Sheerni Boarding Home and are now starting college (stay tuned for more on that!). The interviews ended abruptly when a group of Sambhali Trust teachers arrived to meet with volunteers from Germany who are helping them improve their English. Monica and I rescheduled lunch when we missed each other, not realizing that we were just a few feet away from each other for over half an hour. I then grabbed a tuk tuk (motorized rikshaw) and rushed to pick up some lunch for my friend in isolation. I scarfed down my food and arrived at the office a 2 p.m. sharp for the scheduled evaluation of the Laadli Boarding Home. But the plane bringing the evaluator to Jodhpur was late. While we waited and drank chai, we had a very fruitful discussion on topics ranging from mid-term reports to priorities for future funding. Sitting there with senior Sambhali Trust staff, we suddenly had a nice block of time to talk through current issues and look to the future.

Chetan Sharma, the outside evaluator, arrived a bit before 4 p.m. and I, along with Sambhali Trust senior staff and the presidents of Sambhali Austria and Germany, listened to his report on the Laadli Boarding Home where the girls in elementary school live. The evaluation was thorough as he had traveled to the girls’ homes in remote villages to speak to their families, spoken to the girls, their teachers and principal, and Sambhali Trust staff in Jodhpur, and administered academic tests to the girls. Mr. Sharma explained how Sambhali’s connection with the desert community where the girls are from has built the trust that makes the boarding home possible, how the girls are thriving from the foods they eat to the tutoring they receive daily, and how their ongoing connection to their villages is important both for them and for the entire community. Every face in the room beamed when he said he just wished all the other nonprofit organizations were like Sambhali Trust. It was certainly worth waiting a couple of hours to hear what an impact this program made in its first five years and to discuss its future.

As Mr. Sharma spoke I kept thinking of Manisha and all the girls with the opportunity to change the original plan for their life. The path isn’t easy—far from it—but it’s there.

My friend with covid and I had dinner on the roof of the guest house next to Sambhali’s office, her first trip outside her room. We sat far away from each other and as long as the trains weren’t passing by or the dogs barking or the occasional firecracker going off we could hear each other just fine. The young women from Abhayasthali boarding home next door came by to chat from their roof, which is just a few feet away, and ask how she was doing. A good way to end the day.

Plans change. It may be easy to focus on the meetings that don’t happen “on time” or worry about the items on my To Do list that don’t get done—but so much richer to look at the lives that are changing all around me.

Thank you for all you do to make these changes possible.

Shereen Arent 
President, Sambhali U.S. 

P.S. Yes, my beloved Phillies lost the World Series. But what a fun run! And it was also fun to try to explain to my Indian friends why it was worth getting up so early to watch.