October 27th, 2008 Jo
There they are with Moy Moy - proof they really were here, in our house, in our garden, in our every waking moment, just about. I need the proof because they have gone back home and the world seems smaller now, less vivid, less full of excitement and exuberance. I miss them!
Two young boys! What energy, what vitality, what high spirits, what charm! Here’s how I remember them: in constant motion:
That’s how life with Owen and Enzo is. Grab each moment with both hands and hurtle on through the day.
I really miss them.
Posted in Family, Fun! | 2 Comments »
October 27th, 2008 Jo
This was a visit to remember, to be sure.
Nutan (God’s Elder Sister, and Ravi’s little one - hmmm. What does that say about Ravi?) descended upon us three days ago with four of her dearest friends. With her in order above are: Cyndi, Korki, Masha and Suzanne.
She promptly got sick and so I had the pleasure of escorting them around Dehradun while she reclined on her bed of affliction. I took two days off from work and had an absolute ball - mostly the fun was in watching them engage with India.
It was not, however, just the typical experience with foreigners of watching them deal with crowds and traffic and monkeys and cows, though that was certainly part of it.
It was also the experience of being with a group of women who were all activists in their own country, women who had spent years working for public education in their communities and who brought their passion and knowledge along with them here.
I took them on the full-scale tour of the Foundation and watched as they buzzed with ideas for fund-raising, training opportunities in the US and networking possibilities with like-minded people in the rehab community there.
This is how so many things start: a group of women come together and decide to do something for society. It’s how we got public libraries in the US, how most special schools started in this country, and how the Red Cross was established. Think of Florence Nightingale,Rose Hawthorne, Dorothy Day - all my heroes!
Posted in Inspiration | 2 Comments »
October 27th, 2008 Jo
Sakshi was on staff at the table we set up at the Welham Girls mela on Saturday. Her instructions were to sell candles and calendars and to give every adult a flyer about Rainbow Resale.
She was amazing!
We sold over 300 calendars, almost every packet of candles and no adult passed our table without receiving a leaflet on Rainbow. Of course, Rachna, Sonam and Sarthak helped too!
Posted in Shop Talk, Staff Stories | 1 Comment »
October 24th, 2008 Jo
We have every reason to be proud. These are some of the beautiful diyas the young adults in the training centre are making these days with guidance from Monica, one of our most talented special educators.
I visited yesterday with some American friends and the place was buzzing with activity - there’s a mela at Welham Girls tomorrow and it was all hands on deck in an effort to make as many diyas as possible for what promises to be a huge sale opportunity.
Diyas are just one small part of the big picture: independence, self-reliance, the amazing feeling of a job well-done. WELL DONE, CVT!
Posted in Growing Up | 2 Comments »
October 22nd, 2008 Jo
It’s that time of year again. This year, the calendar was dedicated to my Mom and we had a special guest for the launch. Dad came along to the all-staff meeting we had at KV and spoke movingly of how happy Mom would have been to see the work the school is doing.
This is one of my favorite moments of the calendar process: handing it over to the team for their approval. I think they liked it.
Posted in Calendar, Dad | 2 Comments »
October 19th, 2008 Jo
Don’t be fooled by the pensive look. She’s just waiting for the right moment to pounce. When she decides she’s had enough or that you aren’t making any sense or that - God forbid - someone is messing with one of “her” kids, watch out. Shaila is a force to be reckoned with. Thank God she’s on our side.
Shaila joined the Latika Roy Foundation as Chief Coordinator at Latika Vihar three months ago. Since her arrival, enrollment has more than tripled. Usually at this time of year, with exams the driving force in parents’ lives, we are lucky to get 20 kids coming on a given day. THESE days, we get 70. We can imagine what those kids are thinking as they walk in the gate because it’s the same thing we are thinking: what is she going to come up with today?
And in case you’re still wondering: if Shaila is behind it, it’s got to be good.
Posted in Bright Ideas, Staff Stories | No Comments »
October 19th, 2008 Jo
If you think Bridget looks golden, a little sparkly and shining, you’re right. It’s new love (his name is Sarfraz) and it makes her bewitching and delightful to all of us older, more experienced types whose loves are more measured but no less deep. It also makes her just a little hard to get on the phone as he is invariably already talking to her. That phone grows out of her ear and it is part of the syndrome that she loves being teased about it because it gives her yet another reason to talk about him. Ah! Youth!
She does have a professional persona as well, however. Bridget is a talented and dynamic speech therapist, volunteering with us here in the Foundation for three months - and we are squeezing her for every possible ounce of knowledge she can share while we’ve got her in our midst. Yesterday I sat in on the tail end of a workshop she held for the teaching staff and wished, as I often do, that I could start my career over again and become a speech and language development therapist instead of being a fundraiser, administrator and blogger.
What an amazing field! Human communication is such a vast and complicated subject and the more one learns the more one realizes how connected it is to every other aspect of our development. For example, so many behaviour problems originate simply from an inability to communicate. When a speech therapist gives a child a way to “speak” (it can be through gesture, symbols, signs or pictures), many of the troubling and difficult behaviours disappear. And it works, I gather, the other way around as well: when we learn to communicate in different ways we become more intuitive in our listening and understanding, as well as in our ability to make ourselves clear: that helps children know what is expected of them and behave accordingly.
Speech therapists, as a tribe, just seem to believe in the innate goodness of kids, in their desire to learn and to do the right thing. And with their unique skills and understanding, they give kids the skills and understanding THEY need to do it.
Posted in Bright Ideas, Volunteers | 2 Comments »
October 14th, 2008 Jo
I have always gone to Delhi for the calendar - Shalini and I sit for hours and hours with the guys in what I have always thought of as the “press” - now I see that was just the beginning. What we did was to sit with the guys in the first stage of the process: the photo corrections, typesetting, layouts, etc. It’s all done on computers and it’s pretty quiet (though exhausting - we emerge into the daylight from the hermetically sealed basement-cave they work in all bugged-eyed and shattered). This year, because of a problem with last year’s finishing touches, I decided to go to Delhi again for the actual printing, binding and hole punching.
Now THIS is a PRESS. Full court and all.
What a place. Thomson Press is enormous. I walked over a mile in my short time here, just going from one machine to another. The machines are the frightening type that make you think of severed fingers and flying limbs - they are huge and powerful and loud and very, very fast. I loved it.
It brought back memories of visiting Mom at Leary Press, where she went each week to supervise the printing of The Anchor (the diocesan newspaper she edited for many years) and I just love that I am following so closely in her footsteps. She would have just loved my producing a calendar year after year. She is, in fact, the inspiration for it.
35 years ago, the calendar she liked the best stopped being produced. It was a cheap thing, and ugly, but it was functional. It had what she wanted: each month’s page also had the entire year’s calendar printed at the bottom. She liked being able to plan for months in advance without having to turn the page. She was so disappointed at not being able to get it anymore that I decided to surprise her that Christmas by making her one.
Hand-drawn. At the bottom of each page, I drew the entire year, one little box for each month. I was doing the November page when my aunt walked in and said casually “Why don’t you just do the year once, on the last page, and cut the rest of the sheets at the bottom so it’s always visible?” DUH!
It was just one of many things about calendars I would learn by doing, and each year, I believe, the Karuna Vihar calendar gets better because of what we learned the previous year. This year, what I learned was that, in spite of the huge machines that Thomson Press owns, there are many parts of the process which are still done by hand. Going to the factory and meeting the guys engaged in the actual operations is worth the effort. Telling them about Karuna Vihar and getting them on board makes the calendar a better thing. Inclusion!
Posted in Calendar | 1 Comment »
October 14th, 2008 Jo
I would like it on record! I sent my absentee ballot in today.
Posted in Bright Ideas | 1 Comment »
October 12th, 2008 Jo
Oh, the hectic inner lives of children! Who knows what they are saying, what they are thinking, what they are revealing and what they are still holding inside? I love to watch them, just to remind myself of how spacious and textured their landscapes really are, how deeply they care and how closely they observe. . .
Posted in Serious Stuff | 1 Comment »