Give Girls a Chance (Gujarat, India)
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Location: Gujarat, India
Members: 2
Latest Activity: Dec 19, 2009
Gujarat, India
Imagine a place where you sit alone, working, from 6am till long after dark, cut off from your home and society, in a barren tree-less landscape. You did not commit some awful crime to deserve this, you were just born a girl.
Little Rann of Kutch, India For eight months of the year, migrant workers live here scraping by to create some sense of existence by cultivating salt in a landscape that resembles the surface of the moon (and is about the size of Rhode Island). A young girl named Jyotsna sits alone next to a small pump making sure it does not run out of oil, every day from sun up to well past dark. Clack. Clack. Clack. The “machine,” as everyone calls their water pump, sounds like a heartbeat. And in a way, it is. If it stops, so does life here. No more salt. No more money. No more food.
Jyotsna’s parents earn $500 annually from mining salt, and that all depends on the rickety old pump sucking briny underground water to the surface. Once there, the water is channeled into man-made ponds, which are constructed by hand. The sun bakes it, and the salt crystals left behind are sold to flavor potato chips and scrambled eggs in distant lands. Wasting no time, she grabs a few onions from a burlap sack to prepare the evening meal. Jyotsna daydreams of cooking like a chef she once saw on TV (lets hope it’s not Gordon Ramsay).
“I dream I can buy the ingredients and know how to write down the recipes,” she said. She tells us of how she can copy words from a blackboard but is unable to write down words she hears spoken. “My brothers, they study far away from here. They can hope for different things,” she said. “But I am just a girl, what can I hope to be?”
Big Challenge
* Girls with no access to education.
* Parents caught in a cycle of poverty and debt.
Bigger Solution
The Imagine This Team will work with the community to help the girls gain access to edu¬cation by building and designing a small school that provides relief from the elements and unprecedented educational opportunities. We’re talking a few computers with loads of pro¬grams and games, a library, and art supplies.
* A solar powered dune buggy will operate a transportation link in order to connect the girls who live in far-flung stretches of the salt flat (Think Mad Max).
* Each family will be equipped with an upgraded water pump that no longer depends on oil to operate. The savings in energy cost will create a small cash surplus enabling each family to break their cycle of debt, and most importantly, the girls won’t have to sit by the pumps all day making sure they don’t break down!
In one week the (IT!) team will give a girl a chance and watch her change her world.
Imagine This! A community in need, a mission to complete, a week to make a difference.
Little Rann of Kutch, India For eight months of the year, migrant workers live here scraping by to create some sense of existence by cultivating salt in a landscape that resembles the surface of the moon (and is about the size of Rhode Island). A young girl named Jyotsna sits alone next to a small pump making sure it does not run out of oil, every day from sun up to well past dark. Clack. Clack. Clack. The “machine,” as everyone calls their water pump, sounds like a heartbeat. And in a way, it is. If it stops, so does life here. No more salt. No more money. No more food.
Jyotsna’s parents earn $500 annually from mining salt, and that all depends on the rickety old pump sucking briny underground water to the surface. Once there, the water is channeled into man-made ponds, which are constructed by hand. The sun bakes it, and the salt crystals left behind are sold to flavor potato chips and scrambled eggs in distant lands. Wasting no time, she grabs a few onions from a burlap sack to prepare the evening meal. Jyotsna daydreams of cooking like a chef she once saw on TV (lets hope it’s not Gordon Ramsay).
“I dream I can buy the ingredients and know how to write down the recipes,” she said. She tells us of how she can copy words from a blackboard but is unable to write down words she hears spoken. “My brothers, they study far away from here. They can hope for different things,” she said. “But I am just a girl, what can I hope to be?”
Big Challenge
* Girls with no access to education.
* Parents caught in a cycle of poverty and debt.
Bigger Solution
The Imagine This Team will work with the community to help the girls gain access to edu¬cation by building and designing a small school that provides relief from the elements and unprecedented educational opportunities. We’re talking a few computers with loads of pro¬grams and games, a library, and art supplies.
* A solar powered dune buggy will operate a transportation link in order to connect the girls who live in far-flung stretches of the salt flat (Think Mad Max).
* Each family will be equipped with an upgraded water pump that no longer depends on oil to operate. The savings in energy cost will create a small cash surplus enabling each family to break their cycle of debt, and most importantly, the girls won’t have to sit by the pumps all day making sure they don’t break down!
In one week the (IT!) team will give a girl a chance and watch her change her world.
Imagine This! A community in need, a mission to complete, a week to make a difference.
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