Global Activism: Shanti Bhavan school in India

Global Activism: Shanti Bhavan school in India
Global Activism: Shanti Bhavan school in India

Global Activism: Shanti Bhavan school in India

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Worldview travelled to India in January. Today we’ll take you there. For nearly twenty years, India Development Service (IDS), a Chicago-based investment NGO that invests seed money in service and development projects across India, has brought dozens of Global Activists to Chicago who work in India to make the world a better place. They appeared on Worldview. So IDS struck up the idea to bring Worldview to India and talk with these people, on-the-ground, about their work. Nila Vora and Nilesh Kothari of IDS guided us as we bounced around to big cities like, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, as well to remote villages and towns. We met people working to overcome challenges like illiteracy, educating girls, class issues, clean water supply and so much more. Today we begin with a trip we took to Bangalore in southern India. One of the groups we visited is Shanti Bhavan. It’s a school educating underprivileged youth, mostly from the Dalit class, known more popularly as “the Untouchables.” A documentary film made about the school is called “The Backward Class”. We spoke with the school’s founder, Abraham George, and with a number of students whose lives were transformed by their experiences in Shanti Bhavan. PHOTO: Stella is a Shanti Bhavan student who was hired by Goldman Sachs.