A Ten Year Journey – Jayashree Janardhan

As I reflect on what ten years have meant for Asha Seattle – a lot of different memories flood in. I wonder if I can truly capture the spirit of our work over ten years and what it has meant to all of us personally. One way perhaps to describe this is to talk about what it has been like for me - as I have grown with Asha.

My husband Ashok and I started Asha here in 1994 along with a fellow volunteer Siva Athreya. A chance meeting with Siva really changed all our lives. We were all very passionate about working with children. We talked about how we could work together to make a difference. None of us really wanted to be just raising funds. We wanted personal involvement with the children and communities we work with. We wanted to be more than a traditional funding agency – to go beyond receiving annual reports and to interact with our community partners in India personally as often as we could. We looked around and found out about Asha at Stanford.

Asha encouraged a non-hierarchical structure that facilitated all volunteers (experienced and new) to participate in decision making about who we partner with. It also ensured that administrative costs were completely borne by volunteers – forcing us to keep our costs the minimum possible. Sounded interesting enough? We thought we will give it a try. In the beginning we figured we could work with a couple of schools over many years. We wanted to make sure that we stay committed and never slip up in our support. Little did we even think that ideas sometimes have wings of their own? And sometimes end up owning you!

The non-hierarchical nature of Asha had the same appeal to several community members. Soon volunteers started coming and participating whenever they could and on whatever captured their heart. After the first couple of years – we realized the need for a co-coordinator to help track and smooth operations on a day to day basis.  And these days we have a team of them! From the one partner group we started with – today we work with more than forty five. We have maintained steady relationships and have been deeply involved in our partnerships. We still work with our first partner Champa Mahila Society and have evolved our partnership to adjust to changing needs. And I can never cease to marvel at how much Asha has given every one of us in terms of personal growth thanks to this involvement. Over 250 volunteers have contributed to what Asha Seattle is today.

In the early years, we took one conscious decision that really made a difference to the organization and how it grew. We decided that any fund-raising we do will be consciously integrated with the core of our work – our relationships with partners in India and understanding the realities there. I think this motivated many new volunteers to take on roles that inspired them to get more deeply involved. We would visit often and even volunteer with some of our partners. Deeper involvement has meant tremendous growth in understanding and volunteer commitment. From an organization that primarily looked at education as schooling, we have now realized that education is much richer and more powerful than schooling alone. We realized the inter-connected nature of things – health care, food, water, powerful social structures and many other community issues. For us – education has taken on a new meaning. It means looking holistically at what causes lasting change and empowering children and the community. We really want social change mainly using the medium of education from a broad sense. We address connected issues to ensure that our work has real impact in their lives.

We have known so many children and their lives have touched us in so many ways. For many of us – volunteering for Asha has meant putting ourselves in the shoes of what it is like for a child on the streets, a child with disabilities, working children, the girl child who cannot make her own choices - which so many of us take for granted. We have tried to connect with the circumstances faced by communities that work on stone quarry’s and suffer from atrocities that none of us can even dream of. It has meant receiving inspiration and guidance from people who have faced and continue to face incredibly difficult lives. We have constantly questioned ourselves and tried to keep ourselves flexible so that we can meet the needs of the communities we strive to serve. We want to cause real change – social and economic. And our commitment to this only grows stronger every year.

To me personally, Asha is a serious organization – where we are fully conscious of the responsibility we have in ensuring that our work is effective. Even during the music and dance mastis we organize to raise funds – we try to never forget that our responsibility is over and beyond fun events. We work for the children and communities to experience real change. We strive to partner with some of the best and most inspiring grass-roots leaders in India. We work with people who work because of their passion for change. And this is what I think has helped us grow and stay committed. Our inspiration today continues to be the deep lasting change we hope to see in the lives of so many of India’s poor.