She quit smug U.S. life for Indian shanty children
Thursday, 31 October 2002, 20:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
NEW YORK: Shaheen Mistry does not know what made her give up a comfortable life in the U.S. to run a school for Indian children of shantytowns in Mumbai and Pune. But what she states emphatically is that her Akanksha Foundation, which means aspiration in Hindi, will continue to give each child the personal attention required to imbibe quality education and grooming to fit into a vocation of his or her choice. An alumni of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where she pursued a bachelor of arts degree for a year, Mistry said she founded Akanksha Foundation in 1989 while visiting her grandmother in Mumbai. "I think a part of it was just this feeling of being sort of rootless." She said she had been to 10 different schools in five different countries and had been traveling since she was barely a year old. Her father, a banker, had done stints in Lebanon, Greece and Indonesia, besides U.S. and Britain, and all this drew Mistry to her roots. "I really wanted to understand the city beyond the typical Mumbai life," she said, adding that she spent her time visiting courts and jails, besides a brief stint with The Times of India. "But the larger part was that I've always volunteered with kids with some kind of problem or the other, largely kids with disability, wherever we lived. I thought whatever I did in India would be more meaningful." She, therefore, decided to take a year's leave from tuft and see for herself if her plans to remain in India worked out. Eventually, when her project took off, Mistry, who has a master's in education from the Manchester University, Britain, and a bachelor's degree from Bombay University, decided to stay. In three months, the center was built as an informal college project to educate 10 children in one slum in Mumbai. "Now it is a recognized NGO, educating 1,500 children in Mumbai and Pune." Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum named her among the "Global Leaders of Tomorrow". Last year Mistry, who is raising a three-year-old child by herself, was named an Ashoka fellow. The Ashoka organization, founded by Bill Drayton, a former consultant with McKinsey & Co. and assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, also decided to give her a three-year funding. Mistry said Akansha has an annual budget of a little over $180,000, of which 25 percent is not spent. "We have 54 teachers, 18 of them full time, and 300 volunteers," she said, adding that a group of teachers or volunteers also goes to India each year to give the children fresh exposure. A child at Akanksha, she said, goes through seven levels of education and at the top level, each child has an individual mentor. The mentors could be individuals or companies, she said. DSP Merrill Lynch, for example, helps some children interact with the staff, takes them around the offices, she said. "So that the children are exposed to city life, in a sense, get used to it and deal with it."Mistry plans to take the strength of children at the school from 1,560 at present to 10,000 over the next five years for which global consulting giant McKinsey is providing its services. "They (McKinsey) are doing some pretty intensive work on the organizational issues, future all of those," Mistry said. On what she envisages for the alumni of her foundation, Mistry said: "One of the biggest goals, long term, is to bring the kids back into the program as teachers."
Source: IANS
siliconindia