"I know the biggest crime / is just to throw up your hands / saying 'this has nothing to do with me / I just want to live as comfortably as I can.
You got to look outside your eyes / you got to think outside your brain / you got to walk outside your life / to where the neighborhood changes." (From Willing to Fight, by Ani Difranco)

Thursday, December 24, 2009

CNN Local Interview

Filmed June 2009, prior to the CLP Summer 2009 Programs.




Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Best Measurement: Measure in Love, Measure in Life.

21 November 2009

As a young girl, my family took me to the Broadway opening of “RENT” three different times. RENT, a now-cult-classic, is a musical performance that dynamically explores topics of sexuality, gender, disease, art and activism at the turn of the millennium in New York. The hit song, “Seasons of Love,” was a song my mother and I would sing from a tape she had recorded and played ad nauseum in her glaringly red, Pontiac Firebird. The chorus went like this:

“525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? How about love?
How about love? Measure in love.
Seasons of love.”

Measurement is ever-present in the work we do. As we work our way through November, two CLP Board Members, Rachel Meeker and Sydney Craft, are in the throes of Clinton Global Initiative University applications. CLP has been represented at CGIU the passed two years (2008 a nd 2009) with a special invitation to attend this Spring (2010). CGIU is a non-partisan effort developed by former President Clinton in 2005 as a call to action for college students and universities to tackle global problems with collaborative and innovative solutions. CLP was awarded on-stage in 2009 as an “exemplary approach to addressing a specific global challenge.” This was followed by our being awarded $4,000 by the Pat Tillman Foundation as an Outstanding Commitment Award.

One key question in a CGIU application is the organization's quantitative, measurable benchmarks that demonstrate its reach and impact. How do you measure your year? How does the organization prove its effectiveness? How many bed-nets were given? Loans? Scholarships? Computers? How many students enrolled? How many students retained? How much money donated?

In my “day job” as Coordinator of Undergraduate Research at the University of California, Riverside, I recognize the importance of benchmarks, assessments and analysis in determining whether or not we have reached our desired learning outcomes and goals. My office sits squarely next door to the Office of Institutional Research, housing a determined Sociologist that pumps out incredible amounts of information as to the success of our student population. By the sounds of her typing and printing alone, I am well aware of the mass of information and work required to have quantified, statistic information about the retention and graduation rates of university students and the “success” of the university, no matter how narrow that may be defined.

However, CLP does not strive to model itself after the public university system. Nor does it measure its success in the number of “things” re-distributed across the world or in our local community. If a CLP student dropped out of CLP or did not matriculate into higher education, I know we would not have “failed.” If a book club is attended by three people or ten people, we would not have failed. If two scholarships are given or twenty scholarships are given, we would not have failed. If the organization no longer exists one year from now, CLP would not have failed-- the purpose is not to protect the organization, the purpose is to use the organization as one of an infinite number of tools by which we come together collectively to make change.

CLP “goals” are simple: we create spaces where we become fully human, where we engage oppression, where we reflect on the fragmentation resulting from that oppression and where we take action to address it or bring other people into awareness of it.

So, how shall we measure our year? I think it is represented in the number of conversations we had; the number of hearts broken open in tenderness or awareness; the people who feel more conscious of their individual lives and their lives in relationship to others; those who are mindful of the world and their power in the world; those that feel capable of contributing their piece to life.

We shall be measured by the number of organizations and people that led us in a better direction; the ways we became more conscious of our work; the scholarships given to students who are excited to go to wherever they are going; the parents involved; the obstacles-turned-opportunities; the strangers-turned-board-members who are excited to add their piece to the puzzle; the board-members-turned-strangers who have grasped their own deeper calling and feel ready to plunge into the unknown with it based on the learning they experienced in CLP. As said by civil rights leader Rev. Howard Thurman, “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive... then go do it. Because what the world needs are people that have come alive.”

This is not an organization of numbers-- this is an organization for the pursuit and engagement of life. Let us hold ourselves to no other standard than the ways we bring life, engage life and discover life within ourselves and our global community.

In gratitude for your support,
Samantha

Monday, November 16, 2009

UCR Magazine: CLP and Samantha Featured

CLP Featured in UCR Magazine:
http://magazine.ucr.edu/1009/default.asp?tpgid=47251125&sn=112009

Article Excerpt:

"Living the Promise"

Samantha Wilson, who graduated from UC Riverside in June with a bachelor’s degree in global studies, is now coordinating a new brand of university-fueled volunteerism.

In the fall quarter, UCR started a pilot program connecting undergraduates with community groups to do needed research and provide other services. Faculty mentors will work with the students.

As the new coordinator for undergraduate research in the community, Wilson said she is “seeking out opportunities for students to connect to community organizations and entities to find ways that their research, their participation or their presence works for social service or social change, and benefits the community in a new way. … I look forward to mentoring students to organize and develop power with the community through collaborative action and research.”

Although Wilson is a new graduate, she is hardly new to community service. While a UCR junior she founded a nonprofit called Child Leader Project, working to encourage education and leadership globally.

“I wrote a proposal to do a values-based leadership program at a school run by a micro-finance institution in South India and received $10,000 from the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation,” she wrote recently from India. “It began at one school in South India, and has now spread in a rather organic way to three different youth communities across the state of Tamil Nadu. By the end of this summer, we will have approximately 85 students in our programs in India.”

The nonprofit also has connections at UC Riverside and at two area high schools in Riverside and the Jurupa area. “We want youth in the U.S.A. and India to expand education as a lifelong and visionary process of creativity, compassion, exploration, discovery and collaboration,” Wilson said.

Her goals for Child Leader Project: “To bring people together and make a difference in the way we operate as a society, as communities, as schools, families, friends or individuals. We want to re-imagine our world, not simply duplicate it, its injustices, its distractions or its preoccupations within the organization. Therefore, our goal is not money and a killer resume; our goal is social change.”

A team of UCR volunteers went to India in 2008 and taught Indian students about the opportunities of higher education along with other leadership values. “All volunteers for CLP pay to go to India on their own dime — and work very hard when they arrive,” Wilson said. “CLP is far from a vacation: late nights on public buses traveling to and from field sites, all-day programming with high school students, language barriers, heat, mosquitoes. However, the sorts of people that come on a CLP trip are really incredible people — I’d confidently say they are visionary and these sorts of challenges are more like quirky joys to them.”

She has spent summer 2009 on her third trip to India. Two high school exchange students, one from Riverside and one from Jurupa, have also visited. Wilson hopes to leave a permanent program in place, in which Indians teach other Indians. “Children, youth, young adults, adults — people everywhere are aching for meaning and connection,” she wrote from India. “This is what CLP strives to create: a space where we collaborate, create, and connect.

“Although I have graduated as a student, this cycle has not changed. I am still carrying around books and notes and a laptop, still e-mailing professors, still revising and changing what seems to be a lifelong thesis on these ideas,” she wrote. “And I think UCR will be a hotspot for these sorts of things in the future — hopefully the new office for research in the community will be the gathering place for that sort of creative action.”

Friday, July 3, 2009

Leaving Monday... Reading List for the Summer!

I'm leaving for India on Monday. Unfortunately, in the midst of preparing for departure, I've managed to become ill with "Strep Throat." Nevertheless, I've also had the opportunity to prepare my reading list and make a calendar of arrivals and departures for our team of volunteers.

(1) "Yes Means YES! Vision of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape" by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti- Essays on rape and women's sexuality. I have been given a grant by the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation for the development of a creative work on conversations about women and organizing in India. These themes and topics of power and consent and sexuality will be useful fuel for the mental fire.

(2)"The Color of Freedom" by Laura Coppo, an oral biography outlining the lives of two Tamil Nadu social activist-revolutionaries, S. Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan during the time of Mahatma Gandhi and Indian independence.

(3) "Education for Critical Consciousness" and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire. CLP grounds a lot of its operations in Freire's writings on liberating education and the power of reflection and action.

(4) "Deschooling our Lives" edited by Matt Hern provides examples of alternatives to traditional schooling, which may unlock some creative thinking for CLP activities and pedagogies. Thanks to my mentor, Kat Norman, for lending this one (and the next one) to me!

(5) "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Gatto also provides a critical examination of the public school system, the banking system of education, and the connections between the industrialized workforce and the crippling of creativity, enthusiasm, and liberation within public education systems.

(6) "The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex" edited by Incite!Women of Color Against Violence. This one is critical of traditional organizing and organizational development in "capitalist America." Thanks to Patrick for the recommendation! I just got it in the mail today-- right on time!

Other possibilities...
- bell hooks, "Teaching to Transgress"
- A biography of Che Guevara, "A Revolutionary Life"
- "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"
- "AIDS Sutra"

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Moving is Discovering!-- June 21, 2009

Moving is a process of discovery-- I've been finding old notes, photographs, yearbooks, dried flowers, buttons, nails, pens and folders of overly-detailed class notes from four years of undergraduate education.

I've also found a lot of CLP notes, from India to California. Some from plane rides in between the two. Some cryptic, some anthropological, some poetic.

Some without titles. Like this one, scribbled across three sheets, ripped out and attached to a list of "Social Service Activities" compiled by the Lights of India in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu in August 2008...

-----------------------
Untitled, Undated Field Notes (India, August 2008)

Why do we do it? Where? How? Purpose.
Marriage moment: Why don't you work locally? Why do we have to choose?
What are you doing with your life?
I'm unifying mind and action.

[Thinking Florida.]
--> Fantasy world.
--> Letter from God.
--> As I looked beneath me, I was making the road.

The weight of that moment-- to do international organizing the right way requires it to consume you. I want to let it consume me. Studying in endless hunger. Read till it becomes you. Stay up late... creating, becoming, developing.

Service, activism, social justice is a full-time job. There is nothing compartmental about it.

Flexibility. Fearlessness.

These are real lives. Where is US where is THEM ?

[A new definition]: Self-activism: a radical confrontation.
(Real social justice is transformation.)

You should get somewhere and feel fearlessly stupid.
--> Humility.
--> FEARLESS HUMILITY.

"You are a CRAZY American girl!"
--> Identity.
--> Foreigner.
--> Female.
--> Unmarried.

[[Enigma]].

Monday, March 23, 2009

Higher education in India... let the market provide?

An interesting article from the Economist:
(http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12749787)

Special Report on India: Creaking, groaning- Dec 11th 2008

"Primary education is a particular worry. It is hard to teach illiterate Indian women basic hygiene. Illiterate men are not equipped for productive employment. Yet in 2001 only 65% of the population was literate, optimistically defined, compared with 90% in China, even though every Indian government for the past two decades has vowed to fix primary education. The current government is no exception. It has increased the overall education budget, but not much. Last year it represented 2.8% of GDP, about half the figure in Kenya.

At least almost all Indian children now go to school: a survey of 16,000 villages carried out last year by ASER, an NGO, put the enrolment rate at 96%. But it also pointed to the appalling quality of education on offer. Half of ten-year-olds could not read to the basic standard expected of six-year-olds. Over 60% could not do simple division. One reason is that, according to a World Bank study, only half of Indian teachers show up to work. Half of Indian children leave school by the age of 14.

Let the market provide?

Or rather, many of them turn to private schools, on which poor Indians spend 2% of their incomes. Many of these are wholly unregulated, but apparently no worse for it. A study of a Hyderabad slum, by James Tooley of Britain’s Newcastle University, found that of 918 schools, 35% were government-run, 23% were private but officially approved, and 37% were informal. The private schools were better. In a standardised test the informal private schools actually came out best, with an average mark of 59.5% in English, compared with 22.4% in the government schools.

Clearly the government should support the grey market in education that its own failings have given rise to. It should make it easier for private schools to get approval. Their teaching materials could then be upgraded and standardised. ASER’s survey also suggests that, with a few sensible steps, big improvements are possible even in state-run schools. By making teachers accountable to local governments, Bihar, India’s most unlettered state, roughly halved its truancy rate last year. A draft law awaiting parliamentary approval would make similar changes across India.

Higher education is another candidate for reform. In the past five years the rate of enrolment in higher education has taken off, from 7% to 13% of young Indians. But the quality of teaching at India’s 348 universities and some 18,000 colleges is generally poor. NASSCOM, the IT industry’s lobby group, reckons that of the 350,000 engineering graduates who emerge each year, mostly from private colleges, 25% are unemployable without extensive further training, and half are just unemployable.

In response to an urgent need, the central government has announced plans for 30 new centrally run institutions. These will not be first-rate. In a recent ranking of the world’s 500 best universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, only two were from India. But the new central institutions will be much better than most Indian public universities, which are run by state governments. In these places the teaching is mostly dreadful, syllabuses are outdated and facilities can be a health hazard.

Many private establishments (which must be affiliated to a public university and cannot be run for profit) suffer the same deficiencies. With demand for higher education outstripping supply, they have little incentive to improve. Cumbersome and politicised regulators add to their woes. Getting approval to open a nursing college in India can take years even though there is a dire shortage of nurses, with only 30% of nursing jobs in rural hospitals filled. Almost the only investors who would submit themselves to this process are the politicians who control it, and indeed many of them own universities.

In a recent paper on India’s higher education, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur call it “the collateral damage of Indian politics”. For corrupt state-level rulers, a tightly regulated university system has many benefits. Politicians, or their lackeys, collect bribes for appointing faculty, admitting students and awarding good grades. They insert their supporters to run the racket. Having destroyed a public university, they then grant themselves permission to open a private one from which, illegally, they milk profits. India’s politicians would clearly be mad to reform this system."

Friday, January 23, 2009

CLP: Its time to "Barack" and Roll

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

- Inauguration speech, President Barack H. Obama

On Inauguration Day morning, I sat with my family over a glass of champagne to celebrate Barack Obama's first day as the 44th President of the United States. For most of my political life I've known only the experience of George W. Bush-- I've known of resolutions and legislation with which I disagreed on issues of importance for education, women, environment, and international peace. I've seen war. I've seen Guantanamo. I've seen tax cuts that, when paired with ignorance and arrogance by a government intended to set some limits on greed, have resulted in a hallowing recession-- if not depression-- at the same time I plan to graduate with a BA in Global Studies and Religion. The Assistant Director of CLP is preparing to move to a cheaper place as her department store employer makes hints at bankruptcy. Students at UCR may have to take unexpected time off as their parents can no longer afford to send them. Grants? Who knows what will happen with those.

What is it like to grow up in a depression? In relationship to my fellow American citizens, I enjoy relative plenty-- two parents with secure jobs, and no debt in my name. Miraculously, I started a new, well-paying job this quarter as an English Tutor, and although my family has made the decision to "tighten down the house" in fear of a possible lay-off of teachers and education staff, I keep an image of the "New Deal" in my head-- heck, if anything goes really bad, I'll start doing manual labor on a development project-- but not in India, in the USA.

But what about India? What do times like these mean for our responsibilities and relationships abroad?

India has its own set of stimulus packages. An individual within our partner organization, ASA-GV, a microfinance institute, has noted a general sense of concern for the stability and sustainability of their organization as well.

Even in the face of our economic crisis, a crisis that is transnational and interconnected to the economies across the world, I feel our obligation and our responsbilities remain. I have still seen the generosities and willingness of people to be "risky" on "development investments." What better savings, what better investment, than the education of youth and young adults in India and Southern California? These our are youth, our children, and we strive to fulfill our responsbilities to them, to uphold the worth of their future, even in the face of our self-created crisises.

When Obama mentioned "non-believers" in his list of the religious constitutencies of the USA, my brother-in-law smiled and giddily exclaimed to the family-- "Yes! Thats my president!" Finally, a president that validated and spoke to the feelings and beliefs of their constituency-- even a constitutency they may not agree with or relate to.

For me, Obama was "my president" when he described working "alongside" people from across the globe to "feed hungry minds." What better way to describe what CLP strives to do? Work alongside people all over the world to feed hungry minds-- including our own.

With a new sense of connection to our own leadership, our work certainly continues.

Gates on the future of aid:
http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=11ebb33e58a9ff8214910041ef6052e744cfdece&rf=bm

India's Primary Education:
http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=245b1271041e7d13684d8e8f331abac64f28cf3b&rf=bm

Friday, January 2, 2009

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from India!

As I write to you from my balcony in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu on the almost idyllic tropical morning of January 1st, 2009, I hope this email finds you safe and celebratory on the eve of the New Year in California!

After over 30 hours of travel including a six-hour lay over in Dubai (which also included a series of encounters with intoxicated Japanese businessmen, a Starbucks with drinks in Arabic, and an Irish Pub), “Team CLP Phase III” safely arrived in Tamil Nadu, India last Sunday. Since that time, Shady Grove Oliver, Shirley Del Aguila and I have also effectively spent too much personal income at the sunny beach enclave of Mamallapuram on our way to begin work and planning in Pondicherry, where I write to you today. Since our arrival, we have been accompanied by our mother-daughter duo/NGO-partners, Amala and Vasanthi (“Ma”) as well as Ma’s close friends Krishna (“Uncle”) and his friend, Keke.

We’ve had quite a week since our departure from California last Friday.

On Tuesday, December 30th, we embarked on a two-hour bus ride from Mamallapuram to Kanchipuram for a collaborative and exciting meeting with the Rural Institute for Development Education (RIDE) (www.rideindia.org)—a non-governmental organization (NGO) that works specifically to take children out of labor in the silk and stone industries and into one of their twelve “transition schools” before facilitating their entry into the government system. Considering 80% of this area depends on this industry for a living, their 25-year effort in partnership with state and federal government, NGOs, and interested local and international individuals, has been pivotal to decreasing child labor in the wider Kanchipuram area. According to their research surveys, almost 40,000 children were in child labor in the silk mill industry in 1996—a number, they have argued, that has decreased to less than 1,000 thanks to the collaborative work of the organizations listed above (i.e. government labor department providing free machine looms rather than hand looms, enforced laws on advanced payments curbing the willingness of parents to allow children to work, and active outreach on the part of a network of NGOs).

Our future collaboration with RIDE is incredibly exciting—over a two hour meeting, we discussed their work in education and women’s empowerment as related to labor, as well as our work and our ideals with higher education, social justice, and international dialogue in CLP. Upon a viewing of our newly created 10-minute film about our first leadership camp (thanks to the invaluable work of Eamon Conklin), Mr. Jeyaraj was almost moved to tears (having been selected to attend a similar program when he was in the 10th standard that he said “changed the course of his education”), and his wife and him eagerly proposed that we do something similar with graduates from their Child Labor Bridge Schools.

Upon a tour of their “Training Facilities” set in the more remote, rural area of Kanchipuram and surrounded by community gardens to feed the women and children that attend their meetings, we have agree upon a series of “Leadership Programmes” in the Kanchipuram area for Summer 2009 to serve the 15-20 students now aged 14 to 17-years-old who are graduates of their Bridge Schools and have successfully completed 10 years of government education. Futhermore, Mr. Jeyaraj is eager and excited to send information about our organization to other NGOs in his area, with his hope that our program for international dialogue, creativity, social service, peace, and higher education for underserved communities will expand across the South Indian states of “Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala” and someday “all over India, and all over the world!”

After a three hour bus ride from their facilities to our “home base” in Pondicherry, we have spent December 31 in net cafes, coffee shops, and Amala’s Beauty Parlour working on our Leadership Mela for our “Lights of India” who will be spending time in Pondicherry studying higher education, culture, and leadership from Jan. 5 to Jan.8 of next week.

While Shady and Shirley ran around preparing materials for next week’s curriculum and washing our already desperately dirty clothing, Amala and I spent most of our day on her motorbike going from university to university to seek support from principals for tours and lectures about higher education at their facility. We received a warm welcome from the principal of the government-run Tagore’s Arts College—a series of buildings and winding dirt paths that instantly reminded me of my time at the University of Hyderabad in 2007. Although their students will be on holiday, the principal, Dr. Abraham, connected us to two lecturers and administrators from the nearby Polytechnic Universities to provide lectures of higher education and admission to their schools. We will be meeting with them tomorrow, Friday, to firm these plans.

We are also thankful to a myriad of other people who have come out of the community to help us in our task: this includes a friend of Keke’s who does IAS (Indian Administrative Service) coaching for aspiring IAS officers—a number of which are in our Leadership Class! As well as Amala, who will prepare a short presentation on the history of French and British colonization of Pondicherry, so that we may host a analytical discussion on culture and identity to draw parallels to the experiences of our students in Southern California through Shirley’s curriculum, and the 40 packets made by students at Patriot High School in Jurupa Unified School District (thanks again to Toby Walker for his assistance with that component).

Upon leaving the Arts College, Amala and I travelled to Jipmer Medical University, which includes a fully-functioning hospital to meet the needs of the surrounding community. Her uncle works there as a medical social worker, and we were seeking his support to speak to our students (many of which who are aspiring doctors and nurses) about his social work experience at the medical school and in the medical field.

His office, quite appropriately, sits in the middle of the emergency room ward. Outside the building, people were seated and laid all over the street and sidewalk—some surrounded in families, others alone—but almost all moaning or crying out in pain. As we walked into the ward, human bodies laid in all corners of the large, high-ceilinged room, and injections and small operations were taking place right in the public hall way.

I had not been in an Indian hospital since my contracting “malaria” in November 2007, and the smell of the hospital and wounded bodies sent me into a spin, as everywhere I looked people were lying in pain—all, seemingly, on the near edge of death.We decided to sit outside and wait for her uncle to speak to us. Just as we sat on the steps to ward, a small van pulled up with two women inside—one laying across the back seat, the other standing over her crying.
Amala pointed her out to me—“Look, she has been burned” she said.
“What?” I looked over. Her whole body, naked, was scorched, and she wasn’t moving.
“She was cooking and her dress caught fire.”
“Amala—we both know that she doesn’t get caught on fire by cooking.”
Amala responded quietly, “Yeah... I know.”

Domestic abuse between women and men or women and other families often consists of these cases—men (or their families) throwing acid on their wife, or, as the wife cooks or is in the kitchen, men will throw gasoline on their wives and set them on fire—resulting in a purported “cooking” accident.

Hospital workers rushed down from our doorway with a “Burn Victims Unit” stretcher and pulled the woman from the van, rushing her past us as a crying woman followed, reaching out for the victim’s charred hand.

The security guard caught my shock, and, pointing to me, said, “She will die in a few days.”
Amala followed up, “Yes—even with treatment, she will not survive.” Still horrified, I looked to the security guard.
“How often do you see these cases come through?”
“Maybe… 8…9…10 a day.”

The two men driving the van watched the stretcher pass through the doors of the hospital, then, returning to their car, drove away.

I don’t know who the men were. I don’t know who the women were—if they were wealthy, educated, or poor. I don’t know if she had children or what will happen to them now. But I know that the scene was all too familiar to everyone around me, that the woman’s experience was quickly termed a “cooking incident” even though everyone knew what really happened.

Was that the possible fate of the girls in our program? Can this program provide our girls an opportunity to overcome it? Even more importantly, will our program lead to men with different perceptions of women? What are the unseen results and implications of our program in this sector of society? Will our students feel moved to challenge this problem— like the women and men in California who feel called upon to challenge domestic violence or inequality?

As Amala and I drove out of the hospital, still surrounded in bodies upon bodies of people seeking treatment, and continued our tasks for the Leadership Program, I was reminded of something Mr. Jeyaraj told me, smiling, as we left his office just the day before: “Samantha, Child Leader Project is really Child Activist Project—one question you should think about this week is the great implications of making children feel capable of being activists.”

Mindful of this question, I feel that these are the moments that show us, full force, the implications of our work, the importance of the work, and the worth of the work.

So, from these activists in India to you activists back home—thank you again for your support and help with this project. We hope to “see” you January 5, at the UU Church of Riverside, where the Social Justice Committee and CLP will be hosting an international teleconference with our students from here in Pondicherry. Contact Theresa Gilbertson at theresa@childleaderproject.org for more information on how to get involved.

And, now, let us all work for a more just New Year.

In love and action,

Samantha Wilson
Child Leader Project
www.childleaderproject.org

Samantha Wilson's Coordinating Notes

This page is a continuous blog by Samantha Wilson that will serve as a space for updating the process of the Child Leader Project and the experience with international community organizing-- it'll be a space for notes, ideas, ramblings, videos and photos of the life-long process of organizing.

To comment, email samantha@childleaderproject.org