Andrew Jelinek arrived with a compass on his arm, inked in a deep blue hue. No other Fellow has a matching tattoo, but each has a similar compass—some internal, magnetic pull that led them to precisely the same spot on September 1st: Vishwa Yuva Kendra, where Orientation for AIF’s William J. Clinton Fellowship for Service in India was just beginning.
The AIF Clinton Fellowship for Service provides a select group of young professionals from the USA and India the opportunity to work with NGO’s and social enterprises for ten months, in order to accelerate impact for marginalized and underprivileged communities in India. This year’s application process was the most competitive in the history of the Fellowship, and this year’s class—with 29 American and 11 Indian Fellows—is the largest.
“Orientation” is often referred to as a program, but in my mind it is truly a process; on the cusp of embarking on a 10-month Fellowship, forty new Fellows from around the world paused to reflect, share, learn, and prepare.
From September 1st through September 10th, Fellows engaged in discussion with a wide variety of guest speakers and slowly began to build the friendships that will support them throughout the year. Each Fellow and each guest brought their own questions to the table, challenging those assembled to expand and examine notions of engagement, safety, identity, innovation, and interpretation.
We were very fortunate to be joined by guest speakers Karishma Srivastav, the India Country Director of Half the Sky Movement Media & Technology Engagement Initiative; Ravi Gulati, a social activist and educator; Sushil Ramola, a social entrepreneur and MD and CEO of B-ABLE; Shantanu Guha Ray, a veteran journalist; Sanjana Kapoor, an actress, co-founder of Junoon, and the former manager of the Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai; Vimlendu Jha, the executive director at Sweccha (We for Yamuna), and the founder of Green the Gap; Anita Anand, a global veteran in development communications, who moderated a discussion on Gender; and Milan Moudgill, a photographer and graphic designer who invited the Fellows to consider how imagery is both created and perceived by different communities.
The US Embassy in Delhi also continued its tradition of welcoming AIF Clinton Fellows by inviting them to meet with senior embassy officials. This year we gathered at the American Center, where we met with Walter T. Douglas, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs, and Kathleen Stephens, the United States’ chargé d’affaires to India.
Of course, Orientation would not be complete without the opportunity for Fellows and their host organization mentors to meet for the first time. Mentors from around India traveled to Delhi for a one-day session that covered the logistical aspects of hosting a Fellow, and addressed the challenges both Fellows and host organizations may face as Fellows begin to integrate into their organizations. Fellows and Mentors also sat down together over lunch to discuss the projects that each Fellow will be assigned to. Although brief, this time spent together served as a successful first step towards building strong professional relationships.
Fellows also offered their own knowledge and expertise to the group in a series of resource sessions. Jessica Meckler shared her advice on Marketing and Evaluation strategies and guidelines, and Stephen Coger gifted us with three wonderful coping strategies to employ as we move through new and sometimes trying situations. Speaking from experience, I know these next ten months will test the limits of both our physical and emotional boundaries as we navigate what is, for some of us, a new country; and what are, for all of us, new spaces and relationships.
While our days at VYK were both challenging and meaningful, our trip to the Ashram Paryavaran Vidyalaya (APV) School was something magical. For the first time in the history of the Fellowship a portion of Orientation was held outside of Delhi. On September 5th we boarded an early morning train, and a few hours later climbed into cars to begin a long and winding trip up into the mountains. Both the scenery and the roads were dizzying, and a fallen tree was cause for a pause and an extended chai break. When we finally arrived at our destination, the dark of the night was all encompassing; beyond the reach of city lights, we could barely see the stairs as we climbed towards the school. However, it took only a glimpse of the warm glow emanating from the dormitory windows, and the smiling faces of our hosts to know that we were somewhere special.
The APV School is located in Anjanisain, Tehri Garhwal, 35 km north of the confluence of the Ghagirathi and Alaknanda Rivers—the waters that combine to form the Ganges. Nestled against the face of the Himalayas, APV is a unique educational environment. Guided by Anandji, APV’s respected founder, the community of teachers at APV is dedicated to providing holistic and mindful education to the rural poor of Uttarakhand’s Garhwal hills. Classes are based on practical, experiential learning activities and teacher-student cooperative investigation. APV has hosted a number of AIF Clinton Fellows in the past, and this year it welcomes Charlotte Brown, a native of Walnut Creek, California. Charlotte is a dedicated practitioner of Vipassana meditation, and a recent graduate from Stanford University where she earned her BA in Contemplative Neuroscience—a combination of neuroscience and Buddhist studies.
Already at home in APV, Charlotte was very excited to share a particularly special aspect of the school with us: among other things, APV is unique in the incredible amount of time it devotes to daily meditation and music sessions for the children. Many Fellows this year are experienced educators, and all were stunned by the dedication, focus, and joy that the students bring to both their song and their practice. Embraced by the APV community, the Fellowship class fell into a beautiful rhythm of morning meditations, football games with the children, observation of classes, and long discussions about what brought us all to this common ground, and the inspirations, questions, and goals that lead us forward.
Inherent to the task of orienting oneself is accepting and embracing the presence and importance of others in your world. As Fellows, we were tasked during Orientation not only with locating our place in this new professional, linguistic, and cultural landscape, but also with understanding our place within a growing network of Fellows, alumni, mentors, beneficiaries, and supporters.
Alumni play an especially important link in this Fellowship network and often serve as additional mentors and guides throughout the Fellowship journey. There is a large base of Fellowship alumni that still reside in India, including AIF Fellow Khushi Malhotra, class of 2012-2013. Khushi lived and worked at APV during her Fellowship experience, and after one year back in the US, recently returned to APV to continue teaching for another six months. It was with great pleasure that she greeted the new Fellows; when I asked her about her decision to return she told me:
The reason I came back is because my Fellowship experience was so profound: living in a community of teachers, working with children who experience and fully “get” the sense of what life truly is meant to be, on a plane that’s a little bit removed from the sense of the individual, the sense of me, the sense of competition, the sense of fear. This school and community of teachers are about knowing oneself, and from that knowing comes this place of being able to provide real service.
This is what we’ve shared with the Fellows here. We’ve been overjoyed to have almost forty people here, about to embark on their journeys—a 10-month transformational journey where they learn seva, this sense of selfless service, and they’ve had the opportunity to experience this sense of seva at APV school.
Seva is a concept at the heart of the Fellowship—a current that runs beneath the motto “Serve, Learn, Lead.” Before boarding planes, trains, buses, and autos to reach our placement cities and organizations, we were gifted the the calm of APV and the opportunity to truly contemplate how we can serve the communities that will soon become our own.
Standing on the balcony outside APV’s dining hall, gazing across a valley of shifting clouds and unpredictable peaks, it was easy to feel the world fall away. The slap of childrens’ jump ropes against the concrete roof, the sound of papadum sizzling in oil, the clear, liquid song of birds that douse the landscape in vibrant color with every flutter of their wings. At APV we stood in silence, alone and together, listening closely to all that was said, and to the internal compasses that will guide each of us as we move through the next ten months. As the clouds rose to meet us, we finally felt prepared to find our way through them.
——
We all sat together on the floor, legs crossed, voices low, eagerly awaiting the start of the performance. Suddenly, the children entered. “What is your name?” asked a tall boy, dressed in a colorful, bespoke paper outfit. “Pidgeonji,” replied a small boy, tiny in stature but confident in stance. “Where are you going?” queried the first. “I am traveling all over India,” answered Pidgeonji, “I want to learn about all cultures. What are you doing?”
As a second-year Fellow with AIF I am honored to be continuing my service in a new role: whereas last year I was placed in Mumbai with Apnalaya, a wonderful, rights-based community development organization working in Govandi, Mumbai, this year I’m working directly with AIF as the Fellowship’s first Media Fellow.
Like Pidgeonji in the APV students’ play, I’m spending the next ten months traveling around the country, documenting the experiences of my thirty-nine incredible co-Fellows. Each is unique and immensely talented, and each brings a sense of joy and a deep, rich curiosity to our class.
My journey this year is bound to be far different than my last, but I expect nothing less from the Fellowship; without fail, AIF has provided me with an infinite series of new opportunities to test my limits, apply my skills, meet new people, and explore new places. I’m thrilled to have this opportunity to see India through so many bright, curious eyes, and to help my co-Fellows document the incredible discoveries they’re making each day. A desire to embrace the world is something that all AIF Fellows have in common, and I invite the world to embrace these Fellows as they share their journeys with us.
When the tall student asks once more, “Pidgeonji, where are you going?” I echo Pidgeonji’s words: “Why, West Bengal of course!” And so, consulting my own internal compass, I’m off to Kolkata where everyone is busy preparing for Durga Puja, and where three Fellows—Andrew, Laura, and Yojna— are just settling in at their new placements. More soon from those three and that glorious city!
