by Heather Vickery | Dec 10, 2012 | India
The following post was written by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, director of the UU College of Social Justice (UUCSJ). She just finished coleading a service-learning trip to explore justice for rural India with the UU Holdeen India Program.
Our delegation just traveled to India’s western state of Gujarat, where we spent the day on Friday with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a UU Holdeen India Program partner.
Though we had read about SEWA’s work empowering some of India’s most impoverished women, nothing could have prepared us for the morning we spent with the rag pickers. We met with these workers in the place they labor each day: the municipal garbage dump of Ahmedabad, where they pick through fresh mounds of trash to glean the scraps of plastic, paper, and cloth that can still be sold for recycling. Standing high atop the literal mountains of garbage that stretched out on every side, we listened to the women talk about their lives and the difference it has made to have a union that helps them fight for their rights.
We heard Jasiben describe the ways she and her coworkers had been preyed upon by people who buy their gleanings — and how that changed when SEWA opened a competing scrap-buying stall that caters only to women. This stall actually paid market rates for their collections and forced others to raise their prices as well. We learned of SEWA’s tireless efforts to press the government to provide an education to the children of the rag pickers so that the next generation can find alternative employment and an easier life. Epitomizing the end of this particular cycle of poverty, Jasiben’s face shone with pride as she told us that her own daughter has just entered her first year of university.
From the municipal dump, we went to a bustling SEWA production complex where women who work as rag pickers were busy learning a variety of paper-production skills — a way to exit their dangerous trade. The union has won a number of bulk contracts, such as production of file folders for the office supply giant Staples; we watched as the women hand-printed a silk-screened stamp bearing both the Staples and SEWA logos. Though such work might seem tedious, to these women it comes as a lifeline that allows them to leave the work of rag picking behind them forever.
For more than 30 years, SEWA’s primary work has been in helping the most impoverished women in India band together and fight for dignity; recognition; and the basic rights of health care, supplementary food for their families, and an education for their children. Women who roll cigarettes for sale on the street, sew piece-work clothing in their homes, or make the ubiquitous thin pancakes known here as papadam have found the strength of a union through SEWA.
In a nation in which women of any class are routinely silenced and abused, it was remarkable to listen to the voices of some of the most marginalized as they stood together and told their stories with an unmistakable air of inner power and self-assurance. We were so proud to learn that SEWA was the first partner of the UU Holdeen India Program, which has supported these women since 1984. We eagerly look forward to the next UUCSJ journey to India in November 2013, when we’ll bring another group to meet these women, document their stories, and be inspired by the depth of their courage.
by Deva Jones | Dec 6, 2012 | India
The following post was written by Laney Ohmans, membership coordinator at the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis and member of Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul. She is currently taking part in a service-learning trip to explore justice for rural India with the UU Holdeen India Program.
Of all the things I’d imagined would seem welcoming about my return trip to India, the smell of the Mumbai airport had not been one of them. As soon I stepped out of the plane, though, there it was: a thick bank of turmeric and musk and damp. I felt a mix of recognition and surprise, of the familiar and the foreign, that would follow me through my time here.
Four years ago I came to India on a similar quest from my home congregation, Unity Church, to volunteer for two months as an English teacher in the school run by Vidhayak Sansad (VS), a Holdeen partner in rural India. This trip was a return to the familiar VS campus with a service-learning group of 10 Unitarian Universalists, all connected through the UU College of Social Justice. I had initially agreed to the trip — a gift from my minister, who realized at the last moment that she would be unable to go — with no hesitation. As the departure date ticked closer, though, I grew more and more uncomfortable.
I’d returned from my initial time in Usgaon overflowing with admiration for the work of our Holdeen partner, ready to offer, as Dag Hammarskjöld says, “the chalice of [my] being to receive, to carry, and to give back.” Four years had passed since that trip, however, and in the interim I felt that my chalice had slowly emptied. The realities of my life had seemed much more pressing and had demanded so much of my attention. I’d lost pieces of that passion in the struggle to find a job, find a new job, find another job, balance three jobs, finish my bachelor’s degree, move to a new city. I worried that the girl who had gone to Usgaon years ago had become a stranger to me, and that my life would seem completely foreign to her.
But when we made it to the Usgaon campus, I found that my face ached from smiling after an hour. I saw my former students and hundreds of repetitions of hokey pokey and “thank you, madam” and shared lunches and breakfasts and dinners came flooding back. I sat with my trip mates in meetings with activists from the Shramajeevi Sanghatana union and felt again the powerful force of their convictions and the clarity they brought to their struggle for justice in their block, district, city, and state. By the end of the trip I felt truly full of purpose again, renewed by the energy of the place, with every intention of keeping the part of myself that holds those memories close. I hope that she is never a stranger to me again.
On my way home, though, I feel I’m faced with a larger problem of recognition and connection. It’s easy to be resolute when everything around you seems so clear. When the distractions of your daily life are 15 hours away. When you’re surrounded by people who share your values and amplify them. What is difficult is to force yourself to be changed while everything around you remains as it has been. When I get back to the United States, all my jobs are waiting, as are my friends, my family, my car, my computer, my iPod, my gym membership, my favorite bar. How can I hold on to this feeling in the midst of all that familiar?
Clearly I don’t have the answer to this — if you do, please leave it for me in the comments! — but I did find one thing. As I was writing this post, I searched for the Hammarskjöld quote I mentioned earlier. I know the first piece by heart because I often use it in our membership classes at First Unitarian Society. What I didn’t know was that there is a second stanza to the poem. After urging us to hold out the chalice of our being each day, Hammarskjöld reminds us that each day it must be held out empty. I’ll leave you with his words:
Each day the first day: each day a life.
Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being
to receive, to carry, and give back.
It must be held out empty —
for the past must only be reflected
in its polish, its shape, its capacity.
