Visit of Global Giving Team to NEEV : Mansi and Mehr
Anurag Jain
Mansi, Mehr, Shikha and Anurag from left to right in NEEV’s mehendi field
Dear Friends,
Despite the silence in my reporting NEEV remains bustling with quiet activity. School construction takes a bulk of our attention and time, followed by my entry into woodworking; so quite a few reports are pending from my side. In this one I would like to share a short and beautiful visit by Global Giving team comprising of two young, enthusiastic girls – Mehr and Mansi.
Mehr has completed her graduation in Psychology from Sophia College, Mumbai and Mansi has completed her Engineering from Noida (JSS College, if I remember correctly). At present Mansi is working in Teach for India and Mehr is preparing to pursue her higher education in liberal arts. What spurred these young minds to get off the track of pursuing science and engineering is something that I leave to your imagination. In our conversations, Mehr said that the greatest significance life holds for her is an inquiry into ultimate truth. Now this is something I have never heard from a girl in her early twenties. But that meant that she was bang on what has been my mission, a mission that started at the same age or just a little earlier than Mehr’s.
Mansi’s decision to take a drop from pursuing a corporate job and pursue teaching again reminded me of my own decision to leave the corporate world and join teaching. Through the eyes of these two youngsters, I could see history repeating itself. Of course, these two girls have a long journey ahead. The journey to truth is a journey out of society. To be alone, to negate all the falsity of society is perilous journey into the unknown. Not many wade across the ocean of samsara !
Global Giving, if you have been following my earlier posts is a worldwide crowd funding website. NEEV has been on board of Global Giving for about a year now. What started off as a chancy, off the way kind of relationship is gradually taking deeper roots. But such are the ways of life – what gets rooted and what gets uprooted – is anyone’s guess. This year, NEEV has been getting some support from the Global Giving website after the ending of the Rural Kids Sponsorship Program. Let’s see how far the ship of NEEV sets sail in the waters of Global Giving 😊
Meanwhile Mehr and Mansi are floating in the waters of Global Giving as Field Volunteers. They have had quite a “trip” from the cloud kingdom of Meghalaya to the rustic Kishanganj of Bihar to the place of trees called Jharkhand, meeting different NGOs listed with Global Giving. When they left Jamshedpur, they were all excited to visit an organization in the princely city of Lucknow.
In her introductory mail, Mehr wrote to me about the purpose of their visit, which I am pasting below verbatim
“Just to give you a bit more background, GlobalGiving sends representatives to visit our project partners as often as we can, for a few reasons. These visits show us how funds are being used by our partners to benefit local communities, which helps us ensure we maintain the high quality of our projects. Additionally, these meetings provide a great opportunity for us to work together to help your organization reach its full fundraising potential on GlobalGiving and to understand the needs of our India partners!
We are very excited to see your work in action!”
Mehr and Mansi stayed for two days with us in our NEEV Herbal Cosmetics Unit rising up to the roosters crowing in the morning, taking walks to the village riverside with our student Pooja and her friends and enjoying the pranks of our student Kishan. Of course, all this was punctuated with talks about NEEV’s philosophy, work and conversations with ex-students of NEEV who landed out of the blue to meet us while Mansi and Mehr were here. As if all this was not enough, they all spent time making paper bags, doing carpentry and lending their hands in packaging in the NEEV Herbal Handmade Cosmetics Unit.
They gave us a brief written feedback about NEEV and their stay which I am reproducing below. This is followed by some pictures of their visit 😊
Note from the In-the-Field Traveler
Dear Shikha and Anurag,
It was a beautiful experience being with you in that beautiful place. Thank you so much for the amazing, thought-provoking conversations, Shikha's banana cakes and motherly vibes. We miss the kids already and we feel so attached to that space and everyone. Our room was quite amazingly airy and a great place to be after all the heat. We are especially grateful for that last conversation we had over dinner, it was like the perfect closure.
Feedback on your programs
We absolutely loved your philosophy and how you followed it through both as individuals and as changemakers. At times though, we felt that you were bound by it, not making an allowance for any other path to Truth. Maybe even the flexibility in the ideology is progress in your pursuit? :)
Quote from the In-the-Field Traveler
NEEV follows a strong philosophy of using the head, heart and hand and it shows beautifully in their work. The children touched by NEEV are bold, free and happy. We were floored by the insightful questions they asked and the self-awareness they demonstrated.
Mansi with Kishan, a NEEV Vidyalaya student
Mehr with NEEV Vidyalaya student Pooja and her friend. Mehr almost looks like one of them 😊
Mehr and Mansi taking a look at the NEEV Herbal Products Range. Notice the green bag cuddled under Shikha’s arms. Ask her what she carries in it because she is never, ever without it 😊
Mehr and Mansi sampling the pure essential oils used by NEEV to lend the fragrance to their products. Shikha and I give proof of the steaming heat that day. Co-incidentally there was rain and thunderstorm that evening which Mansi and Mehr relished. Thunderstorms of Jharkhand are a spectacle to watch !
Both the girls also paid a visit to the ongoing school construction. Unfortunately we did not take photos for the same. Which reminds me that the first and last two photos in this mail were taken by our NEEV Vidyalaya student – Dinesh of Std. 7
Love,
Anurag
Please visit https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/help-create-a-revolution-in-education/ in case you wish to make a donation to NEEV.