Yesterday was the day – all the partners (Chaitanya Charitable Trust, Essar Foundation and Savar) came to our hotel and we had a meeting where we got to know each other and hat the possibility to ask first questions. For Keith, Emily and myself it meant that we finally got to meet Kitesh and Kajal from Chaitanya.
Today then was our first day at Chaitanya and after a smooth rkischa ride to the slum we arrived and were quite amazed by their facilities. We got to see their different activities: Day Care Center, Providing basic health care, helping with filling out forms and many more. In the late afternoon we got to watch the project we are trying to help growing: Happy Children Center.
Keith and I somewhat crashed the teaching by handing out canadian flags and gummibears 😉 By that time our wonderful local CDC (the NGO that is running the CSC program for IBM in India) contacts Kabi und Shruti joined us.
We then went all together to the second Center that is an open space. This was quite an intense experience since we went deep into the slum – never feeling unsafe – but just the intensity of poverty really gets to you. And with that I leave it for today.
#ibmcsc india
