Translator: Gehad Salem Reviewer: Mirjana Čutura
I hate to start on a cliché,
but we're all fortunate people living here in the US.
I know that high school can be stressful,
or applying to college can be stressful,
or even having your name misspelled on your Starbucks coffee
is pretty annoying.
But truth is, for most of us in this room,
problems and stress that we encounter are first-world problems
that are scoffed at in comparison to third-world problems
that a lot of people around the world face.
When I was seven, my dad was transferred to India,
and we ended up moving to Bangalore, a city in southern India, for three years.
The standard of living for me in India
wasn't much different from what I'd known in the US.
I went to an international school, and I made new friends.
I did have a uniform, though.
That part I never liked.
What was different though
was the chasm of difference between my private school
and the run-down, yellowing government school across the street.
What was different was the quality of medical care I had access to
for just a cold or a stomach infection
and the infection-ridden, crowded government hospitals
that often didn't have life-saving treatments that many people there needed.
What was most different was
that people seemed to resign to the idea of inequality.
No one seemed to care.
And that took me by surprise.
I've grown up on the American dream
that anyone from any walk of life can make it:
anyone from any social class, any race, any income
has a chance to follow their dream.
It may not be equally difficult for anyone, but it's possible.
And to my eight-year-old brain, it was hard to understand
that the idea of social mobility just didn't exist in countries like India,
especially when it came to education.
Perhaps my experience living in India wasn't entirely authentic,
because though I can stand here, and I can cry, and I can complain
for what I saw people suffer with,
I lived in a secure bubble
away from the difficulties a lot of people there encountered.
I existed within the safety net of my American citizenship.
Three years later, I moved back to the US, to Connecticut,
and I brought back with me my strong Indian accent,
my love for Indian food, and memories of the struggles I saw there.
I remember my apartment complex security guard
who had to pull his son out of school
because his family needed the additional income
or the local vegetable vendor's daughter
who died because the government hospital couldn't diagnose her with tetanus.
As I grew older, these memories stayed with me,
and I really wanted to go back to India, to Bangalore
and leave the bubble I used to live in
and make a direct difference in the lives of young children.
So, in the summer of 2015,
I had the chance to work at a school in India.
This school, Parikrma, was run by a nonprofit organization
aiming to provide free high-quality education
to children living in local slums
to try to lift them out of systemic poverty.
I worked in the remedial department,
and I tried to help students who fell behind their peers
in math, science, and English
to catch up.
I enjoyed coming to Parikrma every single day
because all my students there had an immense gratitude
for the opportunity that they got at Parikrma,
and they were so affectionate toward
and fascinated by the girl with the weird accent.
I loved coming in every single day to Parikrma
because most of my students
came from families earning less than 75 dollars,
and their only exposure to English was at school.
So, many of the teachers there asked me to come in their classes
and talk a little bit about my life in the US
as a sort of motivator to get kids to work on their English.
That way, I was able to interact with students from all different grades
and get to know them from the capacity of a friend
rather than just as a teacher.
One of the first kids I met there was Monika.
She was a really smart second-grader,
and I think she was the first person there to remember my name.
She had a voracious appetite for learning.
She'd ask me to bring her any books I had at home
so she could read more and learn new words.
During lunch, she tried to have extended conversations with me in English
to practice speaking.
As a second-grader,
I think she was acutely aware of her family's financial status
and was driven to take full advantage of Parikrma
to lift her family out of the cycle of poverty.
One day, when I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up,
this is what she told me.
(Video) Monika: My name is Monika.
I want to become a scientist.
Smrithi Raman: I truly hope to see her become a scientist one day
because I know she can do it.
Another one of my favorite kids there was Kiran.
Kiran was a first-grader, and he really struggled with English.
As his tutor, it was really difficult to get through to him
because neither of us understood each other.
I only knew enough of his language to tell him that I can't speak it,
and he struggled with the English alphabet.
I remember, one of the days,
we were working on writing the alphabet and sounding it out,
and I remember him looking more and more confused.
Eventually, I pulled out my phone,
and I tried to play one of those alphabet videos that get you to sing along to it,
and to my surprise, a couple A, B, Cs in,
he started singing along with the video,
and eventually, he was able to spell out the whole alphabet all by himself.
Eventually, we were zooming through larger words.
(Video) Kiran: O
Teacher: Good.
K: B-O. Brother.
M-O-H-H
E-R.
Mother.
F-A-H-H
H-E-R.
Father. Father.
B-R-O
T-H-E-R.
SR: I know it's not a big deal
for someone to be able to say "father" or "mother" or "brother,"
but for someone like Kiran, with no background in English,
no one at home to reinforce what was taught in school,
I was incredibly proud of the progress that he made in four short weeks.
And it was not just in content.
He looked happier and more confident in himself
that he was on par with the rest of his class.
So, let's take a moment here to look at this diagram.
It was published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Committee
on the cycle of poverty in India.
At the top, we have poverty leading to poor food intake,
malnutrition, and stunted development.
And on the other side, we have low-earning capacity
and impaired productivity leading to poverty.
Now, most government programs in countries like India
tend to focus on the result of poverty, like poor food intake and malnutrition.
But what Parikrma did, that's entirely different,
is that it broke the cycle at low-earning capacity and impaired productivity,
and it attacked the very root of poverty.
Perhaps this is why so many students at Parikrma
are the first in their family to graduate from college
or the first in their family to hold a non-low-skill job.
I have experience in two radically different education systems.
Here in the US, public schools are well-funded,
and they encourage academic and intellectual diversity.
In India and in other developing countries in Asia, Africa, South America,
educational opportunities are unequal.
When these opportunities are sectioned off based on income,
how do we bring kids stifled by cyclic poverty the chance to dream?
Kids all over the world have aspirations and dreams.
Are we doing enough to empower them?
And it's not just in India or developing countries.
To a certain degree, the same problem exists in the US.
In states like Louisiana, with poor educational infrastructure,
in cities like Hartford, schools like the Byrnes Academy,
the same problem exists, perhaps on a smaller scale.
Parikrma models for us an education system
where kids, no matter their income,
no matter their socio-economic status, no matter their race,
have the chance to dream
and have the chance to be whoever they want to be.
Some of my most valuable life lessons
were taught to me by second-graders in broken English,
and I am forever indebted to them for that.
Thank you.
(Applause)