Moving from Community Organizing to Global Unity

Over the last year my thought process has shifted from analyzing the social issues from the perspective of the United States, to understanding how to address the disparity that exists in the global context. The question that was constantly turning at the back of my mind was what could I do on the ground to directly improve the lives of others in these impoverished countries. This was the issue that drove me to apply for for the global immersion India program in order to better understand how to impact the challenges that are being experienced by those in poverty in disadvantaged communities across the world.

However, what I did not expect was how this trip would serve as a catalyst in shifting my thinking from how to solve these problems to why such a global inequality exists. What kind of world culture have we subscribed to that has resulted in being comfortable with allowing other countries to be economically disadvantaged and detaching ourselves from a global responsibility or humanity. Rooted in the battle between want and need, I often feel as though we have left others behind in our never-ending desire for an economic advantage.  How can we in the United States want so many things while others still lack the basic necessities needed to survive. This concept truly hit home when our program coordinator Deepa told a story in which her response to the death of a child in the community was met with the comment, “Why are you crying? Children die all the time.”

This unfortunately is not just a simple issue between countries who have and have not, but one that also exists within these countries. This concept was highlighted while visiting a Palace located on a 500 acre cashew farm in Jawhar and its juxtaposition to the farming villagers we had met down the road. While the farmers are attempting to attain the maximum potential from their small area of land in order provide the essentials for their families, the owner of the palace sits lavishly miles away reaping the benefit of his land. The result of the inequality that exists in our culture most often results in disempowerment, while the inequality that exists within India and across the world can result in death of children. It is easy to say that we must first address our own problems in our country before we can help others, but how much do we want before we decide to address the basic needs of children.

While creating a global compassion for humanity that changes the way we live is not an issue that can be easily tackled, addressing the needs of children should be at the foundation. A commonality I observed during conversations and presentations by the Social Enterprise students of the Tata institute was providing support to children while also utilizing them as a vehicle of change. The two ventures that highlighted this focused on building community engagement through a toy library, and confronting gender bias’ by exposing young boys to the job responsibilities of women in the community. In order to change the future culture of the world we must start with not only providing children the support they need but also instilling the values that will change the systemic issues we face as a world. 

 One does not need to travel across the globe to find the suffering of children; it already exists across the border in Mexico. In addition to understanding what services to provide to illegal immigrants in the United States, or putting up fences up to lock them into this poverty, what types of social entrepreneurship opportunities can we begin to implement that are proactive and not reactive?

So how do we raise the bar for all of humanity and create global unity? There is no simple answer to this question, but we should be able to agree that children deserve the chance to be that change.