As I write this year-end edition of our blog I have just received an urgent text from our partner, the Federation of Slum Dweller Women, in the state of Gujarat, India, informing us of the brutal government demolition of 2,000 slum dwellings in the city of Ahmedabad.  Some 6,000 impoverished men, women, and children, the majority of whom are ‘low-caste’ Dalits, have been made instantly homeless. The Federation is working around-the-clock to provide food and shelter, as well as filing emergency petitions to the High Court to intervene.

I wish I could write that this is an isolated incident, but it’s not. Slum settlements that are located on desirable land in India are often flattened with little advance notice or warning, and with even less regard for the families that live there.

Imagine being faced with a choice, just as these men, women and children are: do you stand up and fight for yourself, your home and your family? Do you turn instead to destructive behaviors like conflict or violence? Or do you lose hope and give up?

Your sustained partnership enables us to respond to crises like these. I’m asking you to help us now to empower a girl in these slum communities with the attitudes, strengths, and practical skills she needs to change her life. For just $20/month you can become a GiveStart sponsor, enabling an adolescent girl to participate in CorStone’s programs.

As you may be aware, 2011 has marked an important transitional year in our organization’s 36 year history. Facing financial crisis at the end of 2010, coupled with the loss of our lease at our long-time Center facility in Sausalito, we decided that this year we would focus almost exclusively on the launch and implementation of one major program-one with the potential to impact the greatest number of vulnerable people at the least financial cost and with the greatest possibility to scale over time-a program primarily based on the principles we’ve practiced and taught for more than 36 years.

That project for us was found in the slums of Surat, India-specifically, with 1,000 adolescent girls in over 20 slums in this bustling city of 6 million people. These girls embraced our Children’s Resiliency Program for Girlswith open hearts and an inspiring thirst for practical skills they could use to improve their lives.

All the girls enrolled in this program are from the Dalit caste…living in urban slums of 5,000-10,000 people per slum, with no running water, no sanitation, few if any toilets, annual monsoon floods that reach levels 5-7′ high, and schools where the teacher to student ratio is commonly 1 teacher for every 150 students.

Building on the successful results of a 2009-10 pilot project with 100 high-poverty girls in an 800 year old Muslim enclave in New Delhi, this time, we added a quasi-randomized control design to the program in Surat, with approximately 500 girls participating in the program and 500 girls serving as a control group. Similar to Delhi, we found significant gains in mental health, self-esteem, and problem-solving skills. For instance:

• Girls scoring Normal on standardized psychological assessments increased from 66% at baseline to 79% at post-test-after just 3 months (2 hours per week) in the program. Similarly, girls scoring Borderline decreased from 22% at baseline to 9% at post-test. The Control group showed no statistically significant changes.
• Girls were better able to control their anger, were more hopeful, and were better able to cope with challenges such as health problems, school exams, conflicts with peers and family members, and crime and violence in their environments.
• Parents insisted that their daughters attend the sessions because they believed they couldn’t learn these skills anywhere else. Many parents asked if they could enroll in the trainings for their own benefit.

Next Steps

This past year, partners such as Abbott Labs and Nike Foundation have shared our excitement, supported us, and encouraged us to scale our programs in India. Likewise, the response from the women in the slums has been overwhelming. In October 2011 we met with the leaders of 25 of Surat’s slums, and in collaboration with them, and other partners in Mumbai and Delhi, we have developed a comprehensive plan to expand our programs to over 100 slums in 5 cities over the next 3 years.

We have named this initiative ‘Girls First!‘, a low-cost, scalable, train-the-trainer program that will directly impact the health, education, and employability of 50,000 high-poverty girls in India in 3 years. The average cost over 3 years will be less than US$50 per girl per year-while providing training and employment to nearly 700 women in 100 slums in 5 cities. Our initial four local implementing partners have already been lined-up to serve the first 10,000 girls in Mumbai, Delhi, and Surat beginning in mid-2012.

Girls First! will deliver a one-year training program that begins with our foundational Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls to foster the self-esteem, values, attitudes, and mental health training and support that girls need to put their dreams into action, improve their circumstances and achieve short and long-term goals. This will be followed by rigorous training in topics such as adolescent and reproductive health, clean water, life skills, leadership development, and entrepreneurship to foster self-sufficiency.

Working together with partners like you, CorStone has brought connection, warmth, strength, and hope to thousands of people for over 35 years. Please help us to continue this tradition of serving those in need, helping people to live with love, compassion, and dignity and helping them to help themselves.

Your tax deductible donation can be provided online at CorStone, or you can sponsor a girl through the GiveStart program by clicking here. Donations can also be mailed to CorStone at 250 Camino Alto, Suite 100A, Mill Valley, CA 94941.

Thank you for your care, your concern, your partnership, and for helping to ensure that our heartfelt work together can continue.

Wishing you a joyous holiday season,

Steve Leventhal                              Tom Green

Executive Director                        President, Board of Directors

CRPG participants outside their school

CorStone is pleased to announce the results of the Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls (CRPG) with 1,000 girls from the slums of Surat, India.

The CRPG was conducted in partnership with the Federation of Slum Dwelling Women, a cooperative of over 1,000 women in Surat. Girls in the program were 12-16 years of age, from the Dalit (so-called “untouchable”) caste, at risk for abuse, discrimination, child marriage, and school dropout.

In just 12 weeks (2 hours per week), girls who attended the program saw measurable impact on mental health, self-esteem, optimism, peer and family relationships and school conduct.

And the results…!

Using a mix of standardized assessments and qualitative interviews, our local research partner, Sangath, confirmed that girl participants…

• became better able to control their anger
• were more hopeful and optimistic
• felt a newfound ability to resolve disagreements and avoid fights
• were better able to cope with challenges such as health problems, school exams, conflicts with peers and family members, and crime and violence in their environments

“Ever since the teacher taught us about friendship we behave well with each other. If anyone needs anything we give and we remain together.” (Student)

Girls scoring Normal on the standardized psychological assessments increased from 65.5% at baseline to 79.2% at post-test. Girls scoring Borderline decreased from 22.3% at baseline to 8.8% at post-test. The control group showed no statistically significant difference.

Slum children, Surat, Gujarat 2011

October 12, 2011
Steve Leventhal, Executive Director

When I walk thru the slums of India I often find myself reflecting on the phrase “Giving and receiving are the same”, a core principle in the work of Attitudinal Healing  as well as many other value systems and philosophies. I wrote the below on the way back from India this past week and thought I’d share it. I’m interested to hear if other people working in international development, or for charitable causes in general, have found themselves feeling the same. As always, thanks for reading, and for your support. -Steve

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My blessing, My curse
I wish I could convey what happens to me in the slums
The simple joy
The unraveling of my heart
The revealing of humanity at its best and worst
The elemental wonder and curiosity
The mutual desire to connect, child-like in its simplicity and honesty

Its almost like an addiction now
I’m ashamed to admit it
How can I take from those with so little
How can I fill my heart on the love of those who are given none
How is it I live in a land of plenty and my soul feels so empty
Until I hear the laughter and shouts of those children
As I walk by creaky wooden shacks and leaky roofs
Doing my best to ignore the piss, shit, and streams of trash clinging to my shoes
The undernourished bellies
With hope so little that it could fit in the palm of my hand
 
A little girl reaches out to me
Mischief in her heart, a gleam in her eye
We touch fingers
And shyly smile
And briefly hold a shared candle
That brightens as two flames reach out from across oceans, rise up, and become one
 
For a moment my heart finds rest
As I steal some peace in her blessing.

Mina, Ratna, and Aasha

Meet Aasha, Mina, and Ratna, leaders of the Federation of Women Slum Dwellers and CorStone’s partners in the city of Surat, India.

There are over 100 slums in Surat, housing 45% of the ‘City of Diamonds’ six million inhabitants.

Aasha (Hope) commands leadership of the slums. She is barely literate, having been educated only through the 6^th grade, but is a natural born leader, and has gained the respect of women throughout the slum community. Formerly a factory worker, she is solid and strong, with a smile that lights up not only her face, but the hearts of those around her. She is 39. A grandmother at the age of 33, she has four children and one grandchild.

Her husband drinks and beats her daily.

Mina (Pearl) is 24 years old, with two children. Always smiling and laughing, Mina lives life with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, unafraid of the risk at hand. She speaks openly of not having been ‘matched’ properly with her husband, who is several years older than she and drinks and beats her regularly.

Mina’s work entails helping to collect funds from women participating in the Federation’s informal community savings and loan program, encouraging them to put aside the equivalent of $.20 cents per day to save for their children’s education.

Just before I arrived in Surat, Mina’s brother was hospitalized after being beaten severely by a gang of men. He’d had an affair with a woman from outside the slum, and in the melee that followed, Mina herself was arrested. She spent the night in jail, in fear, trying frantically to reach Aasha. Finally, in the morning, Aasha arrived, paid the requisite bribe to the police, and secured her release.

And finally there is Ratna (Diamond). Ratna is bright, articulate, and hardworking. She was married at age 16, against her will, to a boy her age from another slum, who likes to drink first thing in the morning and beats her regularly. Desperate, and living day-to-day in despair, she nevertheless nearly completed her high school studies. Today, she handles administrative matters for the Federation, which she tells me brings hope and meaning to her life. She earns a little money here and there doing sewing and stitching during the wedding season.

Now, Ratna is 8 months pregnant and way too thin for an advanced stage pregnancy. She didn’t want to get pregnant, but her husband’s virility was being challenged by others in the community who gossiped about his lack of offspring.

All these women are Dalits…’untouchables’, with only their dignity and a newfound self-belief to sustain them. All have known hunger, abuse, discrimination and fear. All share a dream of bettering their lives and the lives of their children. All have told me that they, and the thousands of women who have joined the Federation, have no interest in charity. What they do want is a chance to lift themselves and their children out of generations of endemic poverty by gaining the skills and education they need; access to micro-loans for less than the 140% interest the local loan sharks charge; legal rights to protect them from alcoholic and abusive husbands and corrupt policemen; and basic amenities like toilets and running water.

Working together with Aasha, Mina, and Ratna, and so many other brave women, CorStone’s programs are now reaching 1,000 adolescent girls in 20 slums. We’ve had requests to at least double that figure in 2012, and to launch pilot programs in the giant slums of Mumbai as well. News of our work has spread like wildfire through these communities, igniting passion, enthusiasm, and for perhaps the first time ever: hope. As Ratna said to me recently,

“No one comes to our slums. You are the first to come, and through your visit you have dignified our village…I feel empowered because this is the first time I am hearing about the power of equality, of dignity, of love. Now, we want to work tirelessly from morning to night to bring hope, open hearts, and joy to our children. To teach them the meaning of life.”

Through CorStone’s GiveStart program, you can sponsor a young girl for just 65 cents per day ($20/month) — helping her to attend our Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls in India and begin to build skills that will empower her to change her life.

Aasha, Mina, and Ratna need your help. The girls in the slums need your help. And we need your help. Please donate.

Steve Leventhal
Executive Director
May 7, 2011

Also we’ll be returning to Surat, Gujarat on May 4-9 for Part II of our facilitator training for our Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls.  Over 50 women have been trained to facilitate the program to date and approximately 1,000 adolescent girls from six slums are expected to complete the program by year end 2011. This trip we’ll be conducting a follow-up two day intensive training in Restorative Practices, an innovative conflict resolution / problem-solving methodology ideal for low resourced communities.

Also, this trip we’ll be setting the stage for the rapid scaling of this program. Working with international and local partner organizations we intend to incorporate our training curriculum and methods into a broad market-based microfranchise network designed to equip poor adolescent girls and young women with critical life-skills and essential mental and physical health services in India’s urban slums. There are over 3,500 slums just in the state of Gujarat, housing millions of girls and young women living in impoverished conditions. The goal of the microfranchise will be to recruit, train, and certify a network of independent women health agents to facilitate group-based behavior change education as well as provide urgently needed health products to young women in the slums.

Lastly, in our continuing effort to document the impact of the program on the girls and young women of the slums, we’ll be joined by documentary filmmaker Stacy Waters and a local film crew from Twenty Four Frames, based in New Delhi. We’re looking forward to another memorable and successful trip. Be sure to follow us on our Facebook page and this blog as we share our experiences!

__________________

CorStone needs your support! As you may be aware, CorStone, like so many local and international nonprofits, has seen its revenue from donations drop considerably due to the continued effects of the poor economy. In the past year we have been forced to close several cherished programs even as we seek to expand others to serve people in urgent need in the US and overseas. We know that ours is just one among many good causes in need of support. We ask that you give what you can. Please click here to donate!

Steve Leventhal
Executive Director

Girls in slum greeting CorStone staff. Surat, India. Laura Kudritzki, Photographer. All Rights Reserved. 2011.

Earlier this week, upon completing the launch of CorStone’s Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls in Surat, Gujarat, I spent a night in Mumbai while waiting for my flight back home. The view outside my hotel window was of an immense sprawling slum. Clusters of grey ramshackle tin roof shacks as far as I could see, immense piles of litter, barefoot children, and the smoke of small fires in the alleyways as women began to prepare the evening meal. Frankly, I felt pretty depressed. Hundreds of millions of people in India – and throughout the world – live in conditions just like this, and I couldn’t help thinking that the challenges of poverty, discrimination and indifference are so overwhelming that surely our meager efforts weren’t going to amount to very much.

But then I thought about the difference between this slum and the slums that I’d visited in Surat. There was only one difference really – in the slums of Surat, I’d made friends. In Surat, my heart had been touched and I’d had the immense privilege of touching the hearts of others. And in that mutual reaching out towards each other, human connections had been made, love had been shared, and perhaps seeds of hope and possibility had been planted.

A wise and dear friend once told me that the journey through life is really nothing more – and nothing less – than the ‘lighting of candles’. Candles of the soul. We all hold the possibility of light deep in our souls and we can each serve as a candle-lighter for others. I’m convinced that what a person holds in their soul is what truly matters. It’s what makes us who we are, and it’s what we draw upon as we encounter others along the way, in turn sharing the light that dwells within each of us.

When I think of the women we met in the slums of Gujarat, I hardly think of the poverty they endure on a daily basis. Rather, my memories are of warmth and generosity, heartfelt smiles, authenticity, and dignity. I consider those friendships a blessing, and yes, it’s what makes the difference between seeing a bleak slum when you look out the window and seeing a community of hope.

Last but not least, my sincere thanks to the wonderful team that journeyed with me to Surat – veteran Attitudinal Healing trainers Carolyn Smith and Joe Keery; Bay Area photographer Laura Kudritzki; writer and volunteer Brandi Dawn Henderson; the film crew at 24 Frames; and M. Daniel Macwan, of Swaman Trust, who’s tireless dedication to the slum-dweller women of Gujarat remains an inspiration to us all. To each of you, my gratitude for your presence and contribution.

Steve Leventhal
Executive Director
CorStone
stevel@corstone.org
www.corstone.org

Please click here to donate to the Children’s Resiliency Program for Girls in India.

As Ratna, you’re a gorgeous Indian woman in your early twenties. You have long, shiny hair, which you part in the middle, and braid down your back. Your eyes are large almonds, the color of dark-chocolate, and your smile is as brilliant as the purest diamond, which is what your coastal home of Surat is known for.

As a married woman, you wear silver ankle bracelets that trill as you walk, along with polished rings  which wrap about your petite toes. Around your neck is a sparkling blue and white scarf, which matches your long, sequined tunic, and the tears in your eyes. The tears in my eyes. Tears of joy and gratitude.

You see, you live in a slum, where life is a challenge. Thousands of people live as your neighbors in patchwork homes, where an annual migration occurs as a result of flooding, mosquitoes, disease. Within the entire slum, there is not a single toilet, which means that your ankle bells trill in darkness toward a nearby field, either before dawn or after dusk, so that you, Ratna, can maintain your dignity.

You have a natural spirit, a zest that radiates, but life is painful – an existential crisis always. There is discrimination in schools, in the community, in the workplace. Rarely, the government provides technical trainings, but your spirit is too tired, too occupied with maintaining food and water and shelter, to learn mechanical skills. You walk the dusty paths of your makeshift community and see the vacant eyes of men who are told they are less than men, of women born as “untouchables”, of children whose vitalities are stressed with each passing day.

And then, one day, something changes. You have visitors, teachers, and they hold up a mirror of words so you can see what you have forgotten about yourself. Perhaps, what you have never known. These teachers are amazed by you, by your resiliency, by your strength. By what you have to teach them. They teach Attitudinal Healing, Positive Psychology, Restorative Practices. They value your ability to make a difference in the lives of children in your community, and they respect your natural caretaker’s preference for emotional versus mechanical training.

Before, you felt numb, unaware of pain, because life is what it is and that’s that. But today, when you wake, you feel a new hope, a feeling that you can play a vital role in your community, a determination to change the lives of the young girls who do not have to accept the shame that has been cast upon you for so many of your days.

On this third day of training, though an interpreter will need to translate your heartfelt words, you make direct eye contact with Corstone’s Executive Director, Steve Leventhal. You tell him, “No one comes to our slums. You are the first to come, and through your visit you have dignified our village. You have brought training of human touch, human love, and my family and community will benefit greatly. I feel empowered because this is the first time I am hearing about the power of equality, of dignity, of love. Before, we felt we were poor at heart, but this training is adding love to our hearts. Now, we want to work tirelessly from morning to night to bring hope, open hearts, and joy to our children. To teach them the meaning of life.”

In The Art of Resilience, Carol Orsborn writes, “Mastering the art of resilience does much more than restore you to who you once thought you were. Rather, you emerge from the experience transformed into a truer expression of who you are really meant to be. Prepare to be surprised.”

I believe in you, Ratna. Spread your wings. Fly.

Be surprised.

- Brandi Dawn Henderson, CorStone Volunteer

Dalit girls in Surat slum. Copyright Laura Kudritzki Photography. 2011.

Today, accompanied by Bay Area photographer Laura Kudritzki and a local film crew, I went to visit two slums in Surat, India, as part of the launch of CorStone’s Children’s Resiliency Program with 1,000 at-risk adolescent girls. Six thousand people live in the first slum, 2,000 in the second one. In the 45 years since these slums were established, we were the first foreigners to ever visit. Hundreds of people came out to greet us. Adults, children, for as far I could see. Everyone laughing, yelling, shaking our hands, and calling our names. We visited people in their homes.10 feet by 10 feet, with 5-7 people per shack. When the rains come in June, the floods reach 5-7 feet high, and they have to run. Then the mosquitoes and rats come, as does malaria, dysentery, and death. 2,000 people in a slum, and not a single toilet. They only go to the bathroom before 6am and after 6pm, in a field nearby, because they have too much dignity to be seen.

All the people are Dalits, the ‘untouchables’. The lowest of the low, the rag pickers, and the shit shovelers. With the greatest smiles, and greatest hearts I have ever seen in all the countries and places I have been in my life.

I saw an elderly man standing quietly, dressed in white. I recognized him immediately. I said to my translator, do you know this man? He said yes, he is one of the leaders of the community. I said to the man, you are a man of heart. He said to me, you are a man of heart. We grasped each other’s hands in recognition and he said, I saw you and recognized the face of God. I said to him, I saw you and I recognized the face of God. He said, we have the language of the heart, there is no need to speak. I said yes, and we stood quietly… He said, we are Dalits. No one sees us, and no one will touch us, and yet you reached out and grasped my hand. I said, I recognized you instantly, of course I will touch my friend. He said God is in the sky, and now he is in our faces, and he knows there is no such thing as skin color and discrimination. He said, we are men and we have no dignity here, and yet in an instant you have given us our dignity and we will all remember this moment.

I shook the hand of a child. And suddenly I was surrounded by hundreds of children, each wanting to shake my hand. I think I held a hundred beautiful little hands in the space of a minute. A little girl was smiling at me. Daniel, my translator and guide and dear soul brother said, she is an untouchable and yet you have touched her hand without fear. She has never been touched by someone outside the slum, and she has never seen a foreigner, her life is changed. And I said, yes as has mine.

Press Inquiries:
Diana Iles Parker
Spoken Media
(US) 415.388.8281 (o)
(US) 415.225.8121 (c)
diana@spokenmedia.com

Evidence-based Program a “first” for children living in Gujarat’s slums

Surat, India – January 27, 2011 – CorStone, a U.S.-based nonprofit, kicked-off a 5-day training in Surat, India today to prepare fifty school teachers and community workers to conduct its Children’s Resilience Program with a thousand impoverished adolescent girls in Gujarat. According to M. Daniel Macwan, executive director of the local Swaman Trust, more than 100 additional women were turned away from the training due to lack of space.

The majority of girls selected for enrollment in the program are from the ‘Dalit’ caste – so-called ‘untouchables’ – whose families have been defined by abject poverty and discrimination for hundreds of years. CorStone will work with local partners, Garib Mahila Sangthan of the Slum Dwellers Federation – Surat, and the Swaman Trust which provide services and training to women in slum communities.

“This program builds on the positive results we saw from our pilot program with at-risk adolescent girls in 2009-2010 in New Delhi where we saw strong improvements in mental health, self-esteem, school attendance, and the girls’ ability to effectively handle problems and focus on their studies,” said Steve Leventhal, Executive Director of CorStone. “We’re very excited to implement this first-of-its-kind program in partnership with the Slum Dwellers Federation and Swaman Trust. They have worked very hard with us to put this program together and we’re very appreciative of their efforts”.

All one thousand girls will participate in the CorStone six-month weekly curriculum, which contains exercises and support groups proven to build self-esteem, coping skills, and to reduce susceptibility to depression and trauma. And, all the girls learn simple tools demonstrated to foster values of empathy and compassion, reduce conflict, strengthen social bonds, and promote constructive problem solving. The program has been generously funded in part by the Abbott Fund and Nike Foundation.

M. Daniel Macwan, executive director of Swaman Trust said, “This training is truly the first-of-its kind here in Gujarat. At its core, it helps us to break down barriers between caste, between high-income and low-income people, and will help to prepare these girls with valuable life skills. Access to this kind of training is unprecedented for slum children and we are so grateful for this opportunity.”

Evaluations of the impact of the program on the girls’ well-being is being conducted by Sangath, an internationally recognized mental and behavioral health organization based in Goa, using a quasi-experimental design with 500 girls initially receiving the intervention and 500 girls serving as a control group.

There are 600,000,000 adolescent girls in developing countries, most at risk for poor health, education and economic outcomes. CorStone focuses on adolescent girls because research demonstrates that when these girls are empowered, everyone benefits. When provided with internal or external resources, girls invest in themselves and their families.

About CorStone
CorStone, a non-profit organization based in Mill Valley, California, is committed to bringing low cost/high impact, easily scalable evidence-based methods, interventions and support systems to vulnerable individuals and communities in the U.S. and abroad. Since its inception, the organization has provided trainings and workshops in over 50 countries to thousands of adults and children facing life-threatening illness, conflict and adversity.

About Swaman Trust
Swaman Trust is a community-based organization in Gujarat, India, with the mission to build awareness, educate and mobilize the local slum dweller population.

About the Federation of Slum Dweller Women
The Federation of Slum Dweller Women is based in Gujarat, India. The federation serves slum dweller women across India, providing services, training and advocacy on housing, women’s, and children’s rights on behalf of this highly impoverished and marginalized population.