What attracted me to Asha was its mission of providing education at the grassroots level in India and the fact that it thrives on the enthusiasm and dedication of its volunteers. I initially got involved with Asha in Atlanta through joint fundraising activities as an India Clubofficer at Georgia Tech. After moving to Boston and joining Asha's MIT/Boston chapter, I acted upon my long-time interest in project coordination. Currently I support a project in rural Gujarat where we provide tuition scholarships to over 50 girl students who could not attend school otherwise.I also received the opportunity to visit the schools and met with the students, teachers, and staff in person. Moreover, through weekly meetings, social events, fundraising activities, and project discussions, I have met committed and motivated individuals who have now become my good friends. Come join the team and experience what it's like to make a real difference.

--Hitesh Upadhyay

I began coming to ASHA MIT/Boston meetings in early 2008. At the time, I was volunteering with a small NGOfocused on education in rural India, in addition to my full-time position with an information technology consulting firm in Boston.I heard about ASHA through word of mouth and came to one of the weekend projects meetings. Right away, I was impressed not only bythe commitment of volunteers to improving lives throughout India, but also by the depth of their knowledge about conditions in the region.The collective experience represented by the volunteer base in Boston is considerable, and I soon found that each and every project thechapter chooses to support is subject to a critical yet compassionate analysis. For someone like myself, who came in without a deep background on India, involvementwith Asha has been a terrific opportunity to learn about conditions in the country and the ways we can help out from here in the States.

--Ashley M. Evans

The documentary "The Broken People" introduced me to the plight of Dalits in India. The film featuredinterviews with Dalits in the villages of Gujarat and their day to day struggle for their basic human rights. In the documentary, men and women talk about the discrimination from upper castes, in social, religious and the political environment.The movie intermittently weaves the Indian Constitution that has banned caste-based discrimination. Next, the Dalit children talkabout their experiences in schools. A girl, roughly 13, talks about the discrimination from upper caste teachers and students. She's a Dalit and has recently dropped out of school because she is tired of sitting at the end of the class. She is tired of cleaning the school toilets just because she is Dalit. She is tired of the students asking her not to touch them, because she is a Dalit and she will pollute them. Her voice softens, she is about to cry. She says "I had big dreams in my life, I wanted to be a doctor or a nurse, and serve the people, but I forgot. I forgot that as a Dalit, I don't even have the right to dream about anything". The documentary left me sad and a feeling to help this community lingered on. But what could we really do to help? I had heard of Asha and attended a few meetings at their MIT chapter. Would they help? May be. I attended more meetings and listened to volunteers talk about the projects. I realized the grassroots level impact of Asha, helping people that not many large organizations would have helped.I talked to them about the documentary, the Dalit girl and "Navsarjan" - a local organization working on Dalit rights in the villages of Gujarat.More volunteers got involved and we got funding from friends, family and corporations. Beginning June 2007, we were able to support 44 girls tostudy in private schools. I hope that the girl in the documentary benefited from the scholarship. I hope that she knows that she has a right to dream and a right to education.

--Mira Chokshi