Investing in Delhi’s Youth
By Jessica Partnow
New Delhi, INDIA – When 16 year old Ishita Chaudhry agreed to speak at a New Delhi conference on social and ethnic breakdown in India in the wake of the 2002 riots in Gujarat, she had no idea that it would change the course of her life.
The careful preparation and thought that went into her attempt at representing India’s youth – nearly a quarter of the country’s population – on important issues of social justice was met with what amounted to a pat on the head from conference organizers.
While it seemed adults in the NGO world benefited from professional networks, resources, and funds, Chaudhry felt the youth voice was being silenced.
Four years later, that frustration has been transformed into The Youth Parliament, an organization that has helped over 800 young people design, fund, and implement their own projects.
The YP functions as a resource center for kids with an idea, supplying young people with the research, connections, and support they need to make it happen – and “it” can be anything from a documentary film, to by-kids-for-kids health education programs, to rural-urban cultural exchanges.
Successfully completed projects have included distributing clothes and food to New Delhi's street kids, a documentary on the
commercialization of sports culture, and a youth forum exploring the effects of corruption on every day life.
To learn more about the Youth Parliament or to get involved in their work, please write to theypfoundation@gmail.com or visit theyouthparliament.blogspot.com.
I Come from All of India
And I'm Just Like You
Ashraf with Arzoo Kids
founder and director
Sulekha Ali. Photo by
Alex Stonehill.
Ahmedabad, INDIA—In a small, dimly lit room decorated with drawings celebrating Christmas, Diwali, and Eid, forty children attending Arzoo Kids Center sit with eyes closed and hands folded as if in prayer, belting out the Indian national anthem. While this may seem like a commonplace scene in an Indian after school program, it could mean salvation for the troubled city of Ahmedabad.
Gujarat made international news in February of 2002 when brutal ethnic riots between the Hindu and Muslim populations swept the state after an attack on a train of Hindu pilgrims returning from the controversial temple site at Ayodhya. In less than a month over 2,000 people were killed and countless others were left homeless, traumatized, and angry. Ahmedabad was the site of some of the worst violence.
Though the national climate has changed in the past four years with the shift of parliamentary control to the more moderate Congress Party, the Hindu-Nationalist BJP still controls Gujarat. Despite government probes and investigations into the riots currently underway, Hindu/Muslim relations remain tense. Many citizens of Ahmedabad worry that the possibility for more violence lies just beneath the surface.
"If the spirit of violence is in the people, it will take place regardless of the government," says Sulekha Ali, a young woman from a neighborhood where some of the worst violence took place. “Even now, if we see anything happening, even some small incident between a motorist and a police officer, our hearts are filled with fear that it will become another riot."
These concerns, coupled with a belief that children's minds are the key to a more peaceful future, led Ali and two friends to found Arzoo Kids in the immediate aftermath of the riots. At the time Ali was living with her family in a temporary refugee camp for Muslims displaced by the violence, and she believed that as long as her society stayed segregated from and suspicious of each other there was no hope for a lasting peace.
Ali and her partners soon moved the center to a small space in the poor and working class neighborhood of Behrampura, home to a diverse population of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, with a reputation as flash point for ethnic violence. She went door to door encouraging children from all backgrounds to come in the afternoons to play games, paint pictures, learn chess, study, or just talk about their problems with each other and the volunteer teachers.
At first community response was low. Though Hindu and Muslim children attend school together and their parents interact by necessity everyday on the streets of Ahmedabad, a program to specifically bring them together was unheard of, and Hindu parents were hesitant to send their children to an informal program run by Muslims. Ultimately, the Arzoo founders’ good intentions and community outreach efforts, along with word of mouth from children who enjoyed their afternoons there won out. Now forty children from backgrounds that match the diverse demographics of Behrampura fill the small school building for several hours each day.
The Arzoo kids recently wrote and preformed a musical for their community where individual children came on stage as hypothetical people from different states and of different religions singing about their customs. At the end of the performance everyone came on stage singing together in chorus, "My name is Bhindia, I come from all over India, and I am just like you!" Ali understands the limitations of a program like Arzoo Kids. She knows that it can only do so much in the face of deep-rooted fear and hatred. But her hope is that through Arzoo (Gujarati for Wish), she can play a part in developing young people who are sensitive, tolerant, and courageous so that if violence breaks out again there will be at least forty young voices speaking against it.
Ashraf Sheikh, 14, says he will be one of those voices. The riots came to his neighborhood when he was eleven years old, and he saw many of his friends and neighbors beat up and their houses burned while police stood by. He was terrified and angry, feelings which were intensified by his isolation from his old Hindu friends while his family took shelter in a refugee camp. When Sheikh saw that many of his peers were joining the rioting, he says he was so angry that all he could think to do was fight. But his parents held him back, concerned for his safety.
One day, as he was walking around his ravaged neighborhood just before the state imposed curfew, he came across Arzoo kids. He says the love and respect he felt from the teachers there attracted him right away. Sheikh has now become a serious student, a devotee of afternoon Arzoo chess games, and a master kite maker (A tradition in Ahmedabad, home of the International Kite Festival). He hopes to attend one of India’s top universities and to one day become a doctor.
While he believes riots will again come to Gujarat, he says that this time he will stand up against friends participating in the fighting. "I will say 'stop!' and challenge them to think about why they want to make violence and who has told them to do so," says Sheikh, whose shy demeanor grows serious and intent when he speaks of the potential for future riots. "I will tell them that we should give respect to everyone and always take care of them, no matter who they are."
Of all of the NGOs that The Common Language Project has visited thus far, Arzoo Kids is struggling the most for funds and donations.
Despite the very important and unique work that Arzoo is engaged in and the hugely positive role they play in the lives of young people from Behrampura, they are just staying open on about $50 a month and a few proceeds from crafts the students make.
If you can make a donation, please contact Sulekha Ali at: arzookids@gmail.com.
The children at Arzoo are particularly interested in photography, but can't afford cameras or the cost of developing film. If you know of any programs that provide underprivileged kids with photography equipment and training please contact Sulekha at the e-mail address listed above.
© 2007 The Common Language Project
