Life at Manav Sadhna

This holiday season I had the good fortune of volunteering with Manav Sadhna, a non-profit serving the needs of a massive slum (>150K people) right outside the Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India.

The people that work there everyday are basically the most inspiring people i've ever met. love and compassion flow on another level, and they provide family for the kids that have none. My time there was cursory at best, but even in that I was able to help open up a school for blind children from the Tekro (which is the name of the slum). There was a celebration with about 700 kids capped by some volunteers leading everyone to sing 'jingle bells' :)

The next day everyone left to spend some time at a center for people with leprosy. Amazing, inspiring, Mother Teresa-type work.

I also had the opportunity to wash dishes and brainstorm with Seva Cafe, another Manav Sadhna spinoff. What was most inspiring was how well done the operation was. The team was perfect in their execution, and it's a tribute to Sandeep, who runs the show there :) Hopefully looking forward to helping introduce some healthier fare there soon!

On new years eve, I was able to take part in the yearly 'compassion walk', where we made hundreds of sandwiches and then walked to 6 major places of worship (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc) handing out the food to whoever looked hungry. We ended the night at Ram Roti, which is the local soup kitchen, and handed out some prepared food there as well as ate some dinner :)

Aside from all this was the learning experience of what Manav Sadhna does. There was the community center built from the ground up using the most innovative of methods, there was the dozens of experimental toilet designs used to bring sanitation to millions of people who had none, there was the sustainability-minded construction of ESI, a building that would give anything built by Bill McDonough a run for its money, and there was Gramshree, the store that sold beautiful artwork created by women from the Tekro freeing them from rag-picking. And at the center of it all is Jayesh bhai Patel and Viren bhai Joshi, who words cannot describe.

Here is Jayesh bhai congratulating every child for finishing their meal. Grassroots change indeed.

more pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/b.pandya/IndiaChristmas2008#

Introducing Smile Decks!

Originally written by Nipun on the CharityFocus blog:

http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2003

 

Early last year, four of us huddled around the kitchen counter of CF's Intergalactic Headquarters.  Whether it was Adam's hour on the NYC streets of New York or it was Birju and Shephali's lemonade in Central Park, the spirit of the radical kindness was very much in the air.  Somehow, the conversation veered towards an idea that Andrew and I had talked about at a stop-over in Seattle -- "Wouldn't it be cool if we had a deck of cards, each with its own unique idea?"  "Yeah, then small groups could come together and everyone could just pick a card and step up the kindness."  "Or people could pick up a new card everyday and keep their generosity muscles in shape."

Hearing that idea, Adam, Shephali and Birju stepped it up a couple notches.  Now, each suit would be its own theme -- kindness towards yourself, for people you know, for strangers, and for our world.  Not only that, the ideas would get harder as you progressed towards the Ace.  And of course, we had to have the two wild-card jokers too!

After a whole lot of brainstorming, the original designer of the Smile Card (Michael-superstar-Chang), whipped up a seriously cool deck.  In October, we had the first printed deck in our hands!

Since the deck is $5 each, it is unclear exactly how we will sustain this experiment ... but that's never stopped us before either. :)  After distributing more than a 100 decks in grassroot ways, we've already received lots of word-of-mouth requests and had to setup an underground page to receive orders!  Let's see what happens next. :)

If you're curious about what ideas made the initial cut (some changes might be coming), here they are:

For People You Know
For Strangers
For Our World
For Yourself

Do the dishes...unasked!
Pay for the person behind you in line
Get lifelong bulbs for your house and another's house
Practice absolute silence for 15 minutes and just "be"

Vacuum the house
Give 3 people a hug for no reason
Give away reusable shopping bags
Smile! And say hello to 10 strangers

Help a family member with a chore unexpectedly
Lend an ear to a stranger for one hour
Clean up litter on your block
Give away one of your possessions RIGHT NOW

Take 10 minutes to write a song, poem, or note for a loved one
Tell a public service employee how valuable they are
Hug a tree in public, inspire another to do the same
Leave flowers on a stranger's doorstep and run

Express your gratitude - do a special dance for someone
Give a stranger a candy bar
Shut down unnecessary electricity use
Give away something important to you

Make a bagged lunch for a family member and slip a joke in it
Leave cookies in a public place, ask people to pay-it-forward!
Send a thank you card to a green business
Offer an inspiring reading to someone in the room

Give a favorite inspirational book of yours to a friend
Drop quarters in a laundry machine for the next person
Make and post signs for green ideas
Post a list of random kind acts in a public place

Leave chocolate on a co-workers desk
Play the role of doorman for 30 minutes
Tell someone you love them and why
Pay for a stranger's meal anonymously

Write positive notes about your whole family and leave them around the house
Create a "Take a penny, leave a penny" tray for a local store
Plant something in the ground that can grow :)
Learn a statement of gratitude in another language and share it

Share a couple inspirational stories from today's news
Call out 3 acts of kindness by others and thank them
Give a houseplant as a gift
High five 5 people

Use crayons to draw a picture for someone's refrigerator
Sing a cheerful song to a stranger walking on the street
Go to the nearest park and clean up as much as you can
Wear a red clown nose and "be" for 15 minutes

Write a thank you note to one of your teachers
Have an inspiring quote as your voicemail message for a week
Call an animal shelter and donate one item they need
Play sports with strangers in the park

Help a friend get over a fear
Pick a stranger, make him/her smile at any cost
Make a birdbath and place it on your windowsill
Make up a new word about kindness and spread it

If you have other ideas to add in the mix, please do leave a comment here and we'd love to brainstorm it before our next printing.

Work stories

As my life is mostly work with intermittent splices of life :) thought i'd share some tidbits.

 

-I have so far had an 'anti-consulting' experience in that the majority of my work not only doesn't have me traveling, but i'm even closer to home than if i had just gone to the office!  the benefits of living in midtown :)

 

-Contrary to what some may say, McKinsey is filled with people that want to do service in the world.  There's an active social sector practice (for which i've been working in some capacity for a while) and plenty of extra-curricular ops (for example, we just had a day to bring awareness to climate change issues and had dozens and dozens of consultants take part).

 

-We're usually at our client location most of the week, but on Friday's we're in the office.  On these days I like to go to random floors, find a desk that is temporarily unoccupied, and drop a candy bar and smile card. :)

-

...then you win

There's an old saying by Mahatma Gandhi:

'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.'

 

I had an experience these last several weeks reminded me of this quote.  Since the start of my consulting work experience, I've had several folks tell me that I should wait a bit before 'being myself', which I took to mean laying off the hugs/meditation/smile cards/irreverence.  however, i've been exceedingly poor at executing that request.

This last engagement I was on lasted 3 weeks.  It was really intense, which basically means 8am-midnight (at least) happens often.  Consequently, I got to know my team-members pretty well since we were pretty much locked in 1 room the entire time. 

Well, I have this habit of taking a moment of silence before meals, and since every single meal was with my team, they happened to be there during this time.  Initially, what I was doing was ignored completely.  It was as if I wasn't there, and they simply began eating.

 
After 4 or 5 days of this, the snickers started.  I would open my eyes and see someone putting bunny ears over my head and another laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.  I just kept silent, flashed a smile and moved on.

These types of jokes lasted a couple more days before one afternoon after silence for lunch I opened my eyes and was met with a pointed question: do you think what you're doing does any good?  The rest of the guys started trying to breakdown the reasoning for why I sat in silence prior to meals.  Are you doing it for religion?  You know nobody is happier for you sitting there quietly, right?  Don't you think you're wasting time just sitting there?  what exactly are you doing?  I responded to everything, one by one.

The next day, the questions continued, as did the day after that, but the following week, on the monday of the last week of the engagement, I opened my eyes after dinner to find the table silent and everyone with their eyes closed.  During the course of this last week, we all engaged in conversation about the nature of the mind, we meditated during the course of the workday, and the last day I read a chapter from the 'Tao Te Ching' prior to our dinner.  As I left the workplace on the last day of the engagement, there were hugs all around as we all expressed gratefulness for the opportunity to connect through this experience.  The job got done, and got done well, but the experience was not limited to just that.

Live your values and folks respond, who knew?

Service in the Streets

This past weekend a small group of friends in manhattan decided to try sharing smiles by providing food to the homeless. It all starting with one member of our group noticing that there are so many restaurants in the city that have excess food left over after doing business and simply end up throwing it away. The thought was to get a few restaurants to agree to giving us the excess food and allowing us to give it to those that could use it.

The process turned out to be not that easy. Apparently there are laws in place preventing this type of work from happening. Because it is hard to manage the quality of food when it leaves restaurant premises, the city does not allow this type of service because they worry about someone getting sick from the food and suing the city or the restaurants.

Not to be deterred, one of our group-members somehow convinced a couple local restaurants to go against the grain in the name of service, and Saturday afternoon we were near the homeless shelter in midtown doing our best to hand out the gifts we received.

By the numbers, we gave out something in the neighborhood of 100 meals, but the process and the feeling associated with it was much different than our previous exploits with lemonade or cookies. It got us all thinking afterward.

The reactions ran the gamut. Some folks came out of shops and repeatedly said 'this is amazing, god bless you.' The first gentleman that we connected with actually just started crying, as we tried to connect with him as a person instead of creating a transaction. We were trying to not just come to bring food, but to help satiate the part of a person that is beyond food. We wanted to connect. We quickly found out that it just isn't that easy. One guy was trying to grab up as much as he could. When we asked him to share for the good of the whole, his exasperated response was 'I'm hungry… I see what you're doing, but I'M HUNGRY.' And so it was.

There was a desperation in the air, and it quickly went from an attempt to connect with new friends to an operation to efficiently dole out food as quickly as possible. When it was over, we were all left wondering why it felt so different compared to our experiences in central park, if all the smile cards that were handed out actually hit home at all, and if the process was simply a 'drop in the ocean.' Open-ended questions of course.

As for myself, while I certainly felt like the help we gave was relatively miniscule, I also think that there were a few folks that were less hungry because of it and that is good. Also, I think the internal process is really important here. The more I keep trying my best to give, the more I find opportunities to give. This was small in the big scheme of things. So what. Who knows where the ripples will go…

Smile Cards at work

I've been working at my job with the consulting firm for a couple months now and have been experimenting with tagging at the workplace.  I'm still being a bit cautious about it, but with all the traveling I'm doing it makes for fun opportunities to do it all over the place.

 

A couple of examples stick in my head and perhaps might make good opportunities for others.  One, several times I'm standing in the lunchline and after paying for my meal I just give an extra bill, drop the smile card in the cashiers hand, and ask if she can give the card to someone after me in line who looks like they could use a pick-me-up.  I usually get quizzical looks, but inevitably they get excited about it, and nobody really knows who's doing it.  Good stuff.  Second, I try and keep my ears open for things that people could really use.  Little things, like some water or a snack or some medicine because folks don't have time to get it themselves, and I use my breaks to get it (assuming its in the building, if not, then i get it over the evening).  Then, the trick is getting it to them with the smile card without them knowing it was me.  more fun :)

 

Aside from that, have been back to the summer of smiles.  Last year, we had a summer of lemonade, this year I think we'll be branching out to a multitude of ideas.  We already have done a run of lemonade and another of cookies, but next week we're going to try taking excess food from restaurants and distributing to local homeless.  decentralized, distributed, small, that's the mantra.  If people look at it and say 'that's amazing!', it tells me that we're not small enough :)

 

Otherwise, the work itself is going well.  I'm learning how to problem solve and use techniques to systematically approach situations I'm presented with and break them down.  It's been enlightening, albeit very tiring and humbling. 

 

It's also very hot now.  i don't like the stickies.  but it rained today and reminded me of the old monsoons i used to witness in arizona for so many years.  nothing to flash flood to nothing in 30 minutes.  hope we get more this summer, and the dirt keeps that fresh rain smell :)

The Man Who Would Cheat Death

Ray Kurzweil is one of the more interesting people i've ever become familiar with. He's got a portfolio of careers and is pretty hard to classify, but definitely a "futurist," someone seen as an authority on technology's impact on the future. And he's been right in the past, to the tune of getting very rich from his predictions.

His next prediction is that human intelligence will be surpassed by machines, and that this will happen in our lifetime (20-30 years). I actually agree with him.

Here's an article on him in this months' Wired, absolutely FASCINATING.

Also, here's a talk that he gave at the famous TED conference on accelerating technology.