Five reasons why India is incredible (& why you should sponsor a child there)
By Alys Matthews, contributing writer for ChildFund
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to India.
I can’t really tell you why. Maybe it was the sunrise yoga classes at the Y, or the addictiveness of the chana masala at the Indian restaurant where I worked as a young adult. Maybe it was that copy of Eat Pray Love I picked up on a whim at the bookstore. For whatever reason, I longed to get outside of myself and experience something new, and I associated that desire with India itself — a place I’d been told was about as far away from my own comfort zone as I could get.
So when I was offered an opportunity to accompany our contributing photographer on a trip to the Keonjhar District of eastern India to gather stories about kids in ChildFund’s programs there, I jumped. And if you get an opportunity to connect to this ravishingly beautiful country in any way — whether you actually hop on a plane there or just hop over to ChildFund.org to sponsor a child in India — I hope you’ll do the same. Here’s why.
1. The culture is fascinating.
India’s culture is extraordinary because of its unique history and position in the world. Named for the Indus River Valley, where a highly developed civilization was already flourishing by 2,500 B.C., the country is a mosaic of thousands of diverse languages, religious customs and cultural traditions. Hinduism, the oldest major religion in the world, as well as many other spiritual traditions, continue to have a profound influence in many people’s daily lives, infusing a little bit of sacredness into the most mundane tasks. Traditions are handed down from generation to generation, especially in rural areas like Keonjhar, which are more insulated from the spread of western culture.
Among these traditions, however, are some that can be harmful to children — like child marriage. India is home to more child brides than any other country in the world. In fact, 27 percent of girls in India are married before their 18th birthday.
When we first arrived in the remote village where Droupadi, 15, lives, it was to the sound of Bollywood dance music blasting from the chaupal, a raised concrete platform in the center of the community. A group of teenage girls in ornate red and white saris performed a choreographed number until everyone in the community had abandoned their work in the rice fields to gather around. Once they had an audience, the youth began to perform a play about child marriage.
Street plays are just one way that ChildFund-supported youth groups in India are educating the older generations about the dangers of being married too young. When you sponsor a child in India, you’re supporting ChildFund’s work to end child marriage globally.
2. It’s one of the fastest-developing nations in the world.
But with unprecedented growth comes unprecedented income inequality and great social disparities that make the poverty here extra complicated. The rich are getting richer at a much faster pace, while the poor still struggle to earn a minimum wage and access quality education and health care. To put it into perspective, it would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top paid executive at a leading Indian company earns in a year. And the widening gaps affect women and children the most.
When I met Kerali, she was almost 2, but she looked so much younger. Her mom, Kainta, says she was born small. The family lives in a remote farming community high in the mountains of the Keonjhar District and scrapes by on whatever odd jobs Kerali’s father can find. “We don’t have enough food,” Kainta says. “Sometimes we get money for food, but there might be two or three months where we don’t have any work.”
ChildFund recently started working in Kerali’s community, and one of our biggest initiatives there is a nutrition program that provides a vitamin-rich porridge for very young children — so there’s hope that her health may improve, especially now that she has a sponsor. If you’re not convinced yet why you should sponsor a child in India, take a look at Smruti, 2, who was in the same boat as Kerali a year ago. With ChildFund’s help, she’s thriving now.
3. Community is everything.
In India, families are large, communities are tight-knit and people do just about everything together. For children and teenagers, big decisions like what job to aspire to or who to marry are rarely undertaken alone. Rather, the family and community are involved every step of the way. So it makes sense that ChildFund India, like all of ChildFund’s country offices, operates according to a community development model, working through local partner organizations to create programs and services that help all the members of the community uplift each other.
Never was the importance of community development more apparent to me than when we visited a ChildFund-supported cooking session for mothers. During these cooking sessions, moms with healthy children coach those with malnourished children about how to prepare food that’s inexpensive, delicious and nutritious. It was less of a class or a lecture than an all-out neighborhood picnic, where the entire community came together to cook, eat and learn together.
There is an old saying in India that can be translated literally as, “One and one sometimes make eleven.” In other words, there is strength in unity and value in doing life together as a community. The most awesome part is that when you sponsor a child in India, you get to become part of that community, too.
4. The children are wonderful.
Okay, children everywhere are wonderful. I guess I’m just biased because my own sponsored child lives in India.
This is Khushbu. She turned 12 in January, and despite the difference in our ages, we have a lot in common. We both come from three-child families, though she’s the youngest in hers and I’m the middle in mine. We both like poetry, the color red and taking showers in the rain (seriously). Long before I actually traveled to India, Khushbu helped me grow to understand the country not just as a magical land of deep jungles and wandering yogis but as a real place, where folks just like me eat, work, sleep, laugh, cry and dance — where kids like my own son go to school and play and stress out about things and dream.
Shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm, I sent Khushbu some money for her birthday. Little did I know that it would arrive right before India went into lockdown, shutting down the economy and exacerbating poverty across the country. Khushbu’s family used the money to buy several months’ worth of food and hygiene supplies. She sent me a photo of her sitting at a table stacked with kilos of flour and lentils.
“I was very happy to know that you visited India,” she wrote. “I would have been happier if you had met me. … I keep all the things and letters you send to me so that I can read them whenever I miss you.”
5. Lotus blossoms.
And hear me out on this one.
Everywhere we went in India — down crowded, noisy highways or peaceful, winding back roads — the roadside ponds were shrouded in mist, gobbed with trash and crowned with creamy pink and white lotus flowers. I had never seen so many in one place or felt as captivated by their beauty.
In India and throughout the world, the lotus has been renowned as a sacred symbol of renewal and rebirth. The flower has an intense will to live. A lotus seed can withstand thousands of years without water, able to germinate over two centuries later. And when it does, it blooms in the most unlikely places — the muddier, the better, in fact. With its roots latched in mud, it submerges every night into the murky water and miraculously re-blooms the next morning, pristine as a painting. In this way, it’s the perfect analogy for the human condition, and for the particular resilience of little humans.
No matter who you are, chances are you’ve overcome some challenges you could write a book about if you wanted to. We share that buoyant spirit with the world’s children. No matter where a child lives, or what the circumstances of their birth, they tend to face the sun, grow and do their best to bloom. I didn’t realize it before, but I didn’t even need to journey across the world to get outside myself. I just needed to help a child on their own journey.
But you don’t need me to tell you that, just like you don’t need me to tell you why India is incredible. Whether you actually go there or sponsor a child in India — or both — you need to experience it for yourself. Make the leap right here.
